Ray and Fraser solved the Botrelle case with hours to spare, but that alone hadn't saved Beth's life. Proving that Beth was innocent of the crime she was convicted of would do no good if she still got executed. So in the end, the only thing Ray really did to help that day was swallowing his pride and phoning Stella.
"My God!" Stella had said, and "That poor woman!" Within the hour, she had charges filed against Franklin, with Beth subpoenaed as a witness.
Even that would have been useless if they couldn't get the governor to agree to postpone her execution. Ray had sat in Welsh's office in a state of high anxiety and watched as Fraser unleashed his incredible Canadian powers of politeness against first the State Governor's secretary and then against the Governor himself. He took some persuading.
"I completely understand, sir," Ray had heard Fraser saying on the phone, and "It would certainly be unfortunate," and "I can't imagine - if there was any appearance of misconduct, it could be very damaging, and just imagine how terrible it would be if the media got a hold of this story before everything was er, cleared up."
Like he didn't know Frannie was out there at her desk phoning the story in to Mackenzie King at the Chicago Guardian.
In the end, the Governor gave in and Beth was saved and Ray went home and finally slept, so tired and worn out that he forgot to feel absolutely terrible.
He took the next day off, then came back to work on Monday like usual.
Solving the Botrelle case changed a lot of things for Ray. Everything was the same, but also nothing was.
Some of the changes were things that maybe nobody could see or feel from the outside. He really trusted Fraser now - because Fraser had trusted him, had believed Ray completely when he said she's lying and she didn't do it, and had broken all the rules to help him prove his suspicions.
A lot of the changes weren't good, though. Other cops looked at him with suspicion now. Some of them still thought Beth had killed her husband, and some of them thought that no matter what, Ray shouldn't have turned on a fellow cop.
The worst change was that now Ray had to live in a world where Sam Franklin was a con.
Sam had meant a lot to Ray, and it turned out that Sam was a liar. A cheat. A thief. Almost a murderer, and that "almost" was only because he'd been stopped.
Sam was going to go to jail for a long time, and although right now other cops were giving Ray dirty looks and veiled comments, he was pretty sure that in a couple years time Franklin would be the one whose name was mud. Taking a kickback was one thing, even framing a suspect could be waved away by a lot of cops, but Sam had tried to kill two cops and an attorney. That didn't fly, even if one of the cops was Canadian.
Ray didn't know how he felt about it, so he tried to shove it all to the back of his mind. Ray couldn't have lived with letting Beth Botrelle die if she was innocent. But part of him didn't want to let Sam go to jail even though he knew he was guilty.
Sam had been a lot of different things to Ray: his coworker, his mentor, his lover, his friend. And now it turned out he just hadn't been who Ray thought he was the whole time. It was, Ray thought, like looking through an old family photo album and suddenly realizing that there was an uninvited stranger in all the pictures of birthdays and Christmases and high school graduations.
It all caught up to Ray later that week, when they were interviewing some hoodlum about a burglary. Ray was working on the punk. He took off his jacket and handed it to Fraser, he rolled up his sleeves, and the next thing he should have done was point at the guy and say You were there on the night of the 29th, weren't you?
But he stopped.
Sam had taught him how to do that. How to slowly turn the pressure up, toy with the suspect, use your body and your voice to intimidate them until you could get them to tell you anything you wanted. Some cops were better at interviews than others, and Sam had been one of the best. He wondered if the technique had worked on Beth Botrelle.
Ray pulled it together and kept going, but his heart hadn't been in it any more. Every interrogation was a performance, and Ray's would have gotten two thumbs down from Siskel and Ebert. The punk clammed up and they ended the day with no leads, no proof and no idea of how to solve the case.
Fraser could obviously tell that there was something wrong, but kindly chose not to say anything to Ray about it for once. Maybe he just thought Ray had low blood sugar.
Ray turned it all over in his mind as he drove home. He wanted to just turn his brain off and relax, but he couldn't, any more than he could have let the Botrelle case go, like everybody but Fraser had told him to.
Nobody had taught Ray more about how to be a cop than Sam, except maybe Harding Welsh. Sam had been his role model, his idea of a clean cop. What Sam had done ate at him. He just couldn't understand why Sam had done what he did.
Ray wanted to forget Sam, but forgetting him would be like forgetting his own name. Well, maybe that was the wrong way of putting it.
He didn't know what to do. He knew he should talk to Fraser: if anybody should understand, it was him. Everybody brushed over the whole "came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father" thing these days, but Ray had read the files: he knew that Fraser's dad had been killed by one of their own, another Mountie, and Fraser had turned that guy in. He'd picked up over time that turning that guy in was a big part of why Fraser was assigned to a broom cupboard in the Canadian Consulate in Chicago, and hanging out with Ray, instead of being stationed in the Northwest Territories like he wanted. Still, Ray was reluctant to talk to him about it, because he didn't know where to start. Silence was a long-held habit when it came to the topic of Sam and him.
Sam....Ray had thought, at first, that he looked up to Sam. Admired him as a colleague. Then he thought Sam was like the big brother he never had, given that his real big brother was an asshole who lived in Arizona and wouldn't give Ray the time of day.
He'd wanted to be like him. Cops, civilian aides, lawyers, the public - they all liked Sam. Because he was polite, and funny, but he never gave too much away or made his problems your problem. Whereas Ray's own mode of interaction with the world seemed to alternate between "asshole" and "needy and pathetic".
Sam had seemed so together in a way that Ray had envied. He was unmistakably an adult, while Ray still felt like a kid, even though he had been pushing 30.
Sam, he'd thought, was the son his dad would have respected, the son-in-law Stella's parents would have loved.
Sam was from Frascati Park, not Cabrini Street, but he came from the same place as Ray - working-class inner city Chicago. His polish was hard won, a defence against being overlooked. You never saw Sam come to work in a t-shirt with mustard from yesterday's hot dog on it because all his other shirts were in the wash. Sam wore a suit to work, a different one every day. With a long tan raincoat like he thought he was a PI in an old movie.
If Ray wanted to be totally pretentious about it, Sam was Old Hollywood and Ray was New Hollywood. Or maybe Direct To Video.
Ray started wearing a jacket and tie to work too, back then, but he always felt stiff and awkward. Eventually, he realised it looked like he was copying Sam and gave up out of embarrassment.
He never looked right in those clothes, anyway. Ray could have won the Powerball and he'd still be the guy who buttoned his shirts wrong, and never wore cufflinks, and wouldn't throw his jeans out when they got holes in the thighs. Sam used a steamer on his jeans, and wasn't embarrassed about it.
After a while, Ray had realized that it wasn't envy he felt for Sam, or fraternal admiration. It was more like what he'd felt for Dave Brubeck, who'd been the pitcher to his catcher on his high school baseball team.
Dave had been a year older than him, a senior. He'd had beautiful dark hair, and when he smiled it lit up his whole face. Ray had seriously considered transferring to a different school district.
He'd thought it was kid stuff, but there he'd been, going through it all again in his thirties.
As luck would have it, though, it turned out that no matter how much Sam ribbed him about wearing clothes to work that Sam wouldn't even wear to change the oil on his car, he actually really liked a guy with hair that wouldn't lie flat and jeans that had holes.
Maybe his subconscious knew how to bring it up better than he did. 'Cause the next day, at the end of another long, fruitless search for any kind of lead, Ray's mouth opened and he said, "If I went to visit Sam in lockup, would you go with me?"
"Yes," Fraser said immediately.
Thank God, Ray thought, and then, What the hell am I going to say to Sam?
Jake Botrelle had lived in the same part of Chicago he worked in. If he hadn't been dead, he'd have been investigating his own murder. That was why Ray had gotten promoted to detective and assigned to the case: there was a gap in the major crimes unit that needed to be filled, and Robert Bedford had suggested he might be suitable for the position.
"You seem like a talented young man," he'd said. Ray hadn't thought he sounded sincere, even at the time, but he'd put that down to Bedford's typical style of speaking.
Sam had taken the lead on the Botrelle case, because the chief had been kind of preoccupied at the time with persuading wife number 3 to marry him and wife number 2 to finalise their divorce. Sam had made Ray his second in command, although it had felt like they were partners. So Ray and Sam began with Jake's murder, and Beth's conviction.
Right now, nobody knew exactly what Bedford did and didn't know. Maybe he conspired with Franklin: maybe he just turned a blind eye to any irregularities. Maybe he'd honestly believed that Beth was guilty, and the only thing he himself was guilty of was the same thing Ray was guilty of: trusting Sam.
Maybe so. Ray didn't buy it. Back then, Ray had just thought that Bedford was an interfering jackass: he kept coming around to Major Crimes and demanding to know why they hadn't finished investigating the Botrelle case yet.
"I want that bitch to fry," he would say, and it always gave Ray a sick feeling in his gut. Okay, yes, Beth Botrelle had whacked her husband - he'd thought - and okay, yes, Jake Botrelle was a cop and therefore entitled to the protection of the blue brotherhood, and okay, yes, they had to throw the book at anyone who plugged a cop so no one would think they could get away with it. Sure. Fine. He understood the principle.
But Jake Botrelle had been Beth's husband, and Beth had loved him once. Ray's first day assigned to the unit, they'd only just finished cleaning out Jake's desk, and there had been a framed picture of Jake and Beth at the F.O.P Christmas dinner-dance sitting in the trash can. They had looked happy. The picture was only a couple years old.
Sam hadn't liked Bedford any more than Ray. Less, maybe. They'd make fun of him when he wasn't around - his ambition, his arrogance, the way he always brought an assistant with him just to hold his fucking briefcase.
Sam used to pull Bedford into the storage cupboard and lock the door and have it out with him for an hour or two. Ray would use the quiet to do some actual work - cross-referencing crime scene photos, typing up transcripts of the 911 calls. He'd thought Sam had been taking one for the team, and he'd been grateful. What the hell had they really been talking about in there?
They'd gotten a conviction for Beth, and Sam had been pleased. That was all that really mattered to Ray at the time. At least, until the sentence came down. He'd never helped kill anybody before. It wasn't a good feeling.
Sam's bail had been set so high that even the Fraternal Order of Police didn't want to pay it, so he was being held in lockup at the 2-4. Something about him being in danger for being a cop if he was in a regular jail. Ray didn't phone ahead to make an appointment: he wasn't sure he'd get in if he asked.
Ray drove himself and Fraser over there, saying little. He was trying to work out how to explain his relationship with Sam to Fraser.
It sounded bad when Ray tried to put it into words, like a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen, but it hadn't been. Sam had known he was married, but he'd also known that Ray and Stella were on the outs, the first big blow-up between them in the series of blow-ups that got worse and worse and eventually led to the end of their marriage.
Franklin was a little older than Ray, but not by much; and he had been the superior officer, sure, but that was just because Sam had joined the CPD earlier and risen through the ranks faster. Where it mattered, they were equals. Weren't they? They'd just been two guys in the same department, nervously looking at each other from over a stack of case files.
And Sam was vulnerable too.
Ray had been married then. Sam wasn't married, and he never had been. Probably, most people at work had no idea that he was gay. Even if some of them had guessed, they couldn't prove anything. Sam never did anything that confirmed it for them. He operated in the realm of plausible deniability, and Ray was one of the few people who could blow that up for him.
They hadn't been together for that long: the guts of a year.
It had been good. But then Stella wanted him back and Ray had a decision to make and he chose the life he thought he wanted.
Sam, for what it was worth, never held it against him. Just to be safe, Ray transferred to Vice the next year.
That was how he ended up working undercover, and that was how he ended up here.
The desk sergeant at the 2-4 wasn't happy about them turning up, but she agreed to let Ray and Fraser see Sam. They pretended it was official business. "Thirty minutes," she said. "That's all you get. If you're not gone by then, you'll be in the cell next to him."
Sam was being held alone in a block of cells that was usually used for prisoners who were being transferred to jail. Ray stared at the door to the block and wished he could come up with some excuse, any excuse, not to go in. He had been foolish: he had been blind: he hadn't realized how nervous he was about seeing Sam again.
"Can you wait outside?" he asked Fraser.
"If that's what you'd prefer," Fraser said.
"I want to - some of the stuff I have to say to him, I think I need to be alone."
Fraser just nodded.
Ray knew that by now he was just putting off what he had to do.
He took a deep breath and walked through the door to the cell block, despite how little he wanted to.
There was Sam, behind bars. Even now, Ray felt like it couldn't be right, like it had to be some kind of sick joke. Sam couldn't be a criminal.
He shot up from the bench as Ray walked in, face falling.
"You can't be here!" Sam gasped. "You're gonna be called as a witness at my trial. You can't see me."
"Oh, now you care about doing it by the book?" Ray hissed.
Ray could feel how close he was to losing his temper. He was just feeling too much. Angry with Sam and afraid for him and confused and upset and worried about him.
He'd never known anybody who went to prison, 'till now. Put plenty of people there, sure, but nobody he'd thought was his friend.
Sam looked terrible. He'd been sleeping in his clothes.
Ray came closer: he couldn't help himself. He put his hands through the bars. Sam reached up to touch his cheek, and Ray closed his eyes against the memories.
"Don't say you're sorry if you don't mean it," Ray said. His voice sounded weird. He touched Sam's hand: Sam held his face. Ray felt strange. He felt like he might throw up.
"I wasn't going to say sorry," Sam said. "What did I do to you?"
And just like that, the anger was back. He pulled away. "Oh, you weren't gonna make me a killer?" he snapped.
"Ray..."
"You weren't going to kill me?"
"I did what I had to do," Sam said. "It wasn't personal."
"It sure felt personal when you had a gun to my head," Ray said.
He looked at Sam's face, looking for any hint of remorse - but then, how well could he read Sam, anyway? Wasn't that the whole problem, that Sam had lied to him from the beginning and Ray had been too starry-eyed to notice?
"We did a hell of a job, huh?" he said, quietly. That was what Sam had told him when he asked him about the Botrelle case. That was how Sam had tried to get him to move on, ignore the questions - and could that only have been last week? It felt like a long time ago.
Sam avoided making eye contact. He tugged at his shirt, trying to get it to lie flat.
"Why'd you do it, Sam?" Ray asked. "For money? Just for money?"
Sam shook his head. "Those bastards thought they owned me," he said, "But I knew they didn't. I was gonna cheat them all and get away with it."
"And let an innocent woman die?"
Ray still couldn't believe it.
"I gave my life to the CPD," Sam snapped, suddenly looking fearsome. "I gave them everything. Now I'm pushing fifty, and what have I got? My hearing is shot, I've got two bullets in me, I gave up on having any kind of a relationship - and what did I get in return? Nothing." He kept going. "Yeah, I took a kickback - so? They were going to ruin my life for that?"
What Ray was thinking must have shown on his face, because Sam said, pleading, "You know as well as I do there are dirtier cops walking the streets."
"You're looking pretty dirty from where I'm standing, Sam," Ray said quietly.
"Hey, Ray, you wanted to know," Sam said, "And now you know. You can walk away with your conscience clear."
"Yeah, 'cause I'm feeling way better now."
Sam just looked at him.
"I thought you were better than this," Ray said.
"Don't say that, rookie," Sam said. "You always had way too high an opinion of me."
And there was nothing left to say after that.
Ray barrelled blindly out the door. He saw the clock on the wall opposite and realized he'd only used fifteen minutes of his thirty. It had felt like longer.
Fraser was standing there, hat in hand. He looked nervous, Ray realized. Maybe he'd overheard - maybe Ray had raised his voice without meaning to - although of course Fraser, with his freakishly good hearing, had probably been able to hear every word that was said.
Ray felt a surge of affection for him.
Fraser probably didn't like Sam too much, but he'd come here with Ray anyway. He hated breaking the rules, but he'd let Ray bend them so he could get to see Sam, and he'd broke every rule there was to save Beth. Fraser, like Sam, looked good on the outside, but his good reached all the way inside.
On a sudden impulse, Ray reached out and hugged him. "Oh!" Fraser said, and he seemed - surprised, but in a good way.
"Thank you," Ray said. "I - just - thank you."
He felt a tentative hand on his shoulder, and then on the back of his neck.