Emma Gordon
She removed the bloody insurance card from the visor and buckled herself in to drive over to the precinct. Emma felt the echo of mistrust spiraling a morning matinee in her gut. When she arrived at the precinct even the backwash of the tar-like coffee left a maddening guilt in her.

Detective Scott had already put her husband Charlie's name on the murder board.

At least he had the good sense to pick the only photograph where he was not smiling. Emma could still feel the sting of his electric grin. Sebastian Scott was exactly what you would expect out of a lead detective. He was domineering, a control freak, and never right about anything.

He thought that Charlie had committed suicide, and if she was really being honest with herself, they all did. They were just looking into it as a professional courtesy. Bash, what people called Detective Scott, was just waiting for Captain Hale to chalk it up to just another NYC suicide.

Bash saw her peering through the white blinds, she couldn't avoid him any longer.

A swollen breath carried her away from her desk and to his self-righteous side. He gave her that one-look glance that meant she should distance herself. He may have been right because he next pinned a photo of Charlie face down in a pool of his own blood drowning in the pavement.

Emma gritted her teeth but decided she needed to be honest with herself.

She was a junior detective, she should have seen the signs. His tie was ever-so crooked as if Marilynn couldn't help but loosen it for him. It was a small thing, but it gave Emma something she didn't need. She had a motive, so she had to destroy Marilynn's car. It had to be done.

Bash put his hand on her shoulder after Emma's stiff upper lip formed an open hangar. "I'm not going to tell you not to worry, Gordon."

Bash always had a way of making everyone uncomfortable. He was somewhat of a Sherlock without the good sense to show some bedside manner to the Vic's family. Unfortunately, now she was the "Vic's family", so she was now at the receiving end of his sharp digging honesty.

To maintain some semblance of sanity, Emma replied, " Oh, for a minute I thought you were going to send me your condolences or something normal. Thanks, Bash. You make a girl feel all warm inside, maybe it's all vomit and dislike of you, but that was a really nice statement."

Bash sighed. "Speaking of statements, you have to give yours, Gordon. I expect you to give me a minute by minute play by play of you finding your husband. Leave out nothing."

Emma scoffed. "Do you want to know what color socks I was wearing too?"

He gave her a threatening grimace. "You know why we're looking into this, Gordon. Let's just get through this so you can begin your five year long celibacy pact to yourself."

Bash's comment scratched her heart with a wrought iron key. He knew her too well. They could very well spend hours arguing about why a Vic went out for coffee the day of their murder. But as soon as Emma's mouth opened to dispute this, Tommy Sullivan appeared beside her.

Tommy was their forensics guy. More importantly though, he was Charlie's best friend. Emma's face brightened and the anger that was bubbling at the seams of her fizzled out. Tommy reached to give her a hug. For a moment, she forgot Tommy carried the secret of Charlie's affair too.

When she let go of him a heaviness broke her and she asked, "Any good news?"

Tommy took a step back from Emma. In a nervous stretch of silence, the question thickened in the air the longer he held it in. Finally, he emptied her deepest fears into the pits of her hell broken eardrums. "The results were inconclusive, Emma."

Bash inserted himself into their conversation with ease. "No hair, prints, anything, Sully?"

Tommy opened the manilla file, slightly scared of Bash. He also hated Bash's nickname for him. Sully was catchy but so was Tommy. But then again, he called her Gordon like she was a man. Tommy shone his cobalt blue eyes back at Bash's serious tawny eyes in reply.

"Not even a fiber other than his clothes. So, unless..." Tommy paused and glanced towards Emma. Bash forced him to look back into his eyes. Tommy shook it off and retained his focus on Bash. "Unless someone was very careful, all evidence points to..."

Before Tommy could even awkwardly stumble over the thought, Bash finished his sentence.

"Suicide, okay so now it's all about suspect statements. We'll dig into a couple things and find out what caused the suicide. I want to wrap this as quickly as I can so Gordon doesn't get involved."

Bash left to go back to his desk and finally Tommy and Emma were alone.

Emma brushed her hand over Tommy's and urged him to come closer so they could talk. Understanding, Tommy acted as if he were wrapping her in a hug again and spoke into her ear nervously. "Are you sure you want to do this, you know what happens if it's a homicide?"

She pulled apart from him like his question was an accusation. "I'm sure, Tommy."

Tommy gulped. "In that case, I know you dealt with Marilynn. There was a bus ticket underneath our bed last night and this morning she was gone. I know we're separated but do you really think that was a fair thing to do? She's made some dishonorable choices but she introduced you two."

Charlie and Marilynn worked for the same company. Emma guessed Charlie's motive was opportunity and proximity. But each of them were scorned by this affair. Tommy, however, was too in love with Marilynn and too docile to fight back or even distance himself.

Emma cast off Tommy's worry for Marilynn with a roll of her emerald eyes. "Yes, I sent her upstate like a dog, but she doesn't need to be a part of this. If we're going to convince everyone it was a murder, we need to eliminate this affair because it looks bad on both our parts."

Tommy gave an exasperated sigh. "Why can't we just tell the truth, Emma. Bash will understand, he's a jerk, but an honest jerk from what I gathered."

Emma gave a pointed glare to Bash who was sitting at his desk and trying to balance his office chair on only the back wheels. Looking back to Tommy, she dismissed this. "I don't know why, I trust him with everything else, but not this."

Tommy nodded and put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll solve this, Emma. Just hang in there. If there's evidence of foul play, I'll find it. But.." he paused. "You should be prepared if no evidence of foul play turns up, it does look like a suicide."

Speechless for a moment, she replied after his feet had already scuffed his body halfway to the elevator. "I know what it looks like." With a deep sense of resignation, she tried to get the image of Charlie's death out of the cracked window of her broken mind.

Emma sauntered back to Bash's side. "So–" Bash started.

She cut his thought off with the end of the blunt blade of an assumption. "You want to know why Marilynn Sullivan has been out of town since Charlie's death. You don't have to go and scare Tommy, they're going through a bad separation so I gave Marilynn some money to sort it out."

Bash burned a hole through her with those dark swarthy eyes. "You are aware of how that sounds? If this were a murder investigation," Bash put a finger in the air pointed to her chest, "and I'm not saying it is, that would make her a prime suspect."

Emma's brows narrowed. "Just take my statement already, Bash."

He nodded his head slowly and led her to the interrogation room. This was not where she pictured herself, on the other side of that iron table and chair. Bash set up the voice recorder and began recording her statement as if this was a homicide investigation.

Emma supposed he didn't believe her that it was murder, but maybe he wanted to for her own sake. Still, Bash had never been kind or even remotely anything other than an eagle scout on a personal journey to see his name in the headlines behind "detective who cracked the case".

Her breathing staggered as he began asking his first questions. "When did you last see your husband Ms. Gordon?"

Emma choked on her name now. She was Ms. Gordon. Not Mrs. Gordon. Emma interlocked her fingers and looked down at the voice recorder then back to Bash who was waiting patiently for her answer. "I saw him in the morning, he told me he had meetings all the way until lunch."

She paused again and Bash finally gave her that grimace that told her she had to continue otherwise she would never hear the end of it. "I kissed him goodbye, watched as his silver sedan rolled out of the driveway, then I went to my Doctor..."

Bash's eyes daunted a haunting question.

"Of course, whatever reason you went to the Doctor for is private information, but would you be willing to share the information..." It was almost as if Bash was trying to be kind, but Emma could see through his manipulation, "for the purpose of the investigation, obviously."

Emma sat on her palms to stop them from shaking. "I was sure I was pregnant, Detective Scott."

"And..." he urged her on.

Emma gritted her teeth angry at his manipulation of her. "Do you see a baby bulge, Bash? For whatever reason, I don't have anything but pictures and memories left of Charlie. But to be quite honest with you, I don't know if I could have even taken care of a baby without Charlie."

Bash sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Let's just get back to it. What happened after the Doctor?"

"I walked to DeMarcos, got Charlie half a meatball sub and some french fries to drop by his work. But... When I got there and his assistant Marilynn buzzed me up, the window was open in his office and it was drafty. I walked to close the window, figuring he was in the bathroom ."

"And what did you see Ms. Gordon?" Bash looked at her with intense scrutiny.

Emma gave him a seething tilt of her head to indicate her affection towards his emphasis that she was no longer a wife. "When I looked out the window he was face down in the pavement and people were crowding around his body like it was a spectacle, that's when I called the NYPD."

"Ms. Gordon," Bash repeated the name like he inwardly had a cheshire grin. "Did you have any marital problems? Was there any reason he would jump...or get pushed?"

Emma bit back her real response and decided to go with a firm declaration. "No, we were great. And I have no idea why Charlie was pushed, but I fully intend to find out."

In that moment Bash and Emma were mere inches away as he decided whether or not to press the subject. Emma knew he would. It was Bash after all. He began to point his declaring finger just like when he interrogated other suspects and tried to assuage guilt and blame onto them.

But before Bash could speak, Captain Hale roared through like a bull in a China Shop.

Hale glanced at Bash for a moment before returning his stormy atlantic eyes to Emma. His fury and wrath snapped on his pristine cufflinks. Emma looked like a deer in headlights. But before her heart could speed up to catch her breath, he spoke with a gruff accusatory statement.

"Detective Gordon, your friend Marilynn Sullivan is dead."

Emma gasped. "Oh my God–"

Hale cut her off. "She was shot with a service pistol and disposed of in the trunk that you just took to the junkyard this morning. Your prints were all over her body, including under her fingernails. And an insurance card with her name was found in your locker, Ms. Gordon."

Captain Hale read her rights out to her but everything felt numb. "But I didn't–"she protested.

The cuffs snapped tightly around her skin. However, in an utter miracle, Bash came to his feet in blatant outrage as he fought to unhand Emma from Hale. Hale screamed in contempt for Bash making his job harder. "Stand down, Scott!" Bash let go but something in him broke.