Garrison/Adrienne: When First We Practice To Deceive

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After Bishop sends over Adrienne's file to Garrison, his review of the evidence supports that Adrienne is likely guilty of contracting her husband's murder, and Kane goes to confront her.



The door to her room wasn't much of a barrier. Standard interior door, a little higher quality than most nice homes had, laced with whatever Forge's ideas about security could come up with, and the traditional brass fittings. With Kane's strength, he could smash the door off the hinges with barely any effort, not even notice it crumple and splinter into fragments. But right now, that door represented the only thing keeping a friend from being a killer, and he didn't know if that was a barrier he wanted to breach.

Standing out in the hallway looking stupid wasn't going to be much help either, and he sighed and knocked on the door.

Not expecting anyone, Adrienne frowned at the knock on the door. She was alone in the suite and perusing tomorrow's schedule, which Inez had just emailed to her. "Coming!" she called out idly. When she'd finished reading the psychometrist unfolded herself from the couch, closing her laptop and setting it on the coffee table before she sauntered over to the door. "Hi," she exclaimed when she saw Garrison. "Long time no see, stranger." She'd been hibernating a little since India, and since the NYPD had started to catch her scent. "Am I missing a ball game or something?"

"No, the game's not on until later." He said, somewhat distracted as he came into the suite. "Is Terry here, or you alone?"
Frowning, Adrienne stared at the FBI agent. "No, she's working. She's always working," she said with a forced chuckle. "You should be trying to persuade her to come to the FBI instead of Interpol when she graduates; she's extremely dedicated." She gestured towards the kitchen. "Did you want a beer?"

"No, I'm good." Garrison said with a shake of his head. The Canadian was carrying a handful of papers in his hand, and he laid them down on the table. "I talked to some people that I know, and Bishop, one of Pete's guys over at Snow Valley, used to be NYPD. He got a look at your file down there, the charges against you, and shipped the notes over to me. I had a look through the case, and called in a couple of favours."

"You... what?" Stunned, Adrienne sat down on the arm of the couch, but missed the arm of the couch and fell hard on her ass instead. Rather than picking herself up, she lay down on the floor, staring at the ceiling, sounding tired. "You weren't supposed to do that. I said I can handle it."

"No, you can't. Because the NYPD has a serious case against you, Adrienne." Kane looked down, dreading what he had to say, but there was no way around it. "Duncan even looked at the evidence. He couldn't find any obvious errors, which I was kind of hoping for. You did it, didn't you?"

Glaring daggers at Kane, the woman sat up, then stood to face the question levelly. Or as levelly as she could given their differences in height. "Do you honestly think I'm going to tell you?" she asked with an ugly sneer. Hearing from Kane, of all people, that the cops had a serious case against her had rattled Adrienne badly, but she'd be damned if she showed it.

"I don't know. I've been looking over a file all day that's telling me a woman I happen to like a hell of a lot put out a contract on her husband and had him shot to death in the dark." Kane didn't flinch as he met her gaze. Was he that wrong? He'd gone to look at the file absolutely sure that she was innocent, and now it was settling into him that it was extremely unlikely that she didn't do it.

She managed to find the couch this time, trying to sink smoothly into it but ending up falling rather bonelessly instead. The investigators at the NYPD had been telling her since the investigation started how they knew she'd hired someone to kill him, trying to force her into a confession, so she wasn't taken aback by the fact that Garrison had figured it out. It was the fact that Kane had said he liked her. Now she was going to let him down. This was what came of associating yourself with people, she thought with a silent curse. It was her own damn fault. "I didn't ask you to like me," she muttered, beginning to feel miserable.

"No, you didn't. I asked you to do dangerous things to help people and you did it for token desserts. So who are you, Adrienne? Are you a murderer or not?" It wasn't so much the conflict that had crept into Kane's voice as it was concern. Not for her plight, but the fear that her reason for doing it was something that the cop in Garrison expected to hear; jealousy, anger, greed.

Adrienne hugged her knees tightly to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. "I'm not a murderer," she said quietly. That's why she'd paid someone else to kill Steven- because she couldn't think of herself as a murderer. "I didn't pull the trigger."

"That changes nothing, Adrienne. You killed him, whether you pulled the trigger or not. You killed him." Kane said flatly. It was true, all of it. The NYPD wouldn't be waiting long to formally charge her, and with her confession to him, Garrison couldn't even try to help her. She'd done it, and he couldn't figure out why.

It took several minutes before Adrienne realized that saying 'shit' repeatedly in her head wasn't going to help her, or make Garrison go away. "I didn't kill him!" she protested, as calm as she could manage. She wasn't about to give Garrison anything he could go to his buddies with, as she was sure he'd do. He wasn't going to get a confession out of her so he could turn her in, like he was obviously trying for. No way would she let him do that to her. "Get out of my suite, Kane. I didn't kill him and if I had, I'd be asking for a fucking medal."

"A man is dead because you paid a thug to kill him. You're going to be charged, Adrienne. And unless you're extremely lucky or the DA is extremely dumb, you're going to go jail for what you've done." Anger replaced his confusion. Obviously that was how she saw people, as things in her way. There wasn't any remorse there. She was happy to use her money to kill is necessary, as long as she could wash her hands of it later. Garrison turned to walk out the door, sick at being so fooled by her.

"Wait." He stopped at the door frame and turned. "What do you mean about the medal?"

"I'm not going to jail. I'm not going to jail." As if saying it would make it happen. Adrienne hugged herself tighter, fighting back the paralysing fear that was crashing over her. "I didn't mean anything," she snapped in response to his question. "I meant that if I'd killed him I'd want a medal. Just that. I'm glad he's dead. But that doesn't mean I paid anyone to do anything."

"Why are you glad? Why should he have deserved to die?"

Well, at least he'd stopped accusing her. It didn't make her feel any more inclined to tell him anything, but at least he'd stopped saying she was going to be charged. "I'm not talking about that. I'm not having that conversation with you." Adrienne was about to tell him to speak to Emma, but bit her tongue, realizing that having Emma tell him was even worse than telling him herself. "Just go away." She frowned at the pathetic tone to her voice.

"Adrienne, I'm about the last person left in law enforcement that still cares about why, and that ends when I walk out that door." Kane said, his hand on the frame of the doorway. It was the last thing he owed her, for what she did for him in India and Bermuda, to at least try and figure out why before making up his mind. "If you still want me to leave, I will."

She opened her mouth to tell him to go, but Adrienne couldn't seem to make herself form the words. Closing her mouth, she didn't say anything for what felt like ages, cursing herself for caring that Garrison was going to go away thinking she was the sort of monster he was surely picturing her as. She wasn't supposed to care. Didn't care about telling the investigators. So why didn't she want Kane to leave? It was infuriating!

"He hit me, okay?" she finally spat out, angered. "He was an abusive son-of-a-bitch, so he deserved to die. That's why I'm glad."

"You did it because he abused you?" Kane paused, looking at her. He'd suspected some kind of incident in her past which would have explained the touch issue of hers. He didn't know about her husband being the culprit though. Unfortunately, murder wasn't an excuse for killing him, not to the law, and especially not through a contract killer.

Chin on her knees, Adrienne glared at Garrison and hugged herself even tighter. "I didn't do anything; I'm not giving you some confession you can take to your buddies at the NYPD. But yeah, he abused me. And I have this wonderful 'gift'," she waved her gloved fingers against her legs with a wry smile, "that allows me to see the future of shit like wedding rings, so I got to see my own death, which was a fun experience, let me tell you. If I had hired some one to kill him, that would have been why I'd have done it."

Shit. There was a reason mutants were giving law enforcement grey hairs. There had been a couple of isolated cases; telepaths who had picked up on someone's intended actions and had moved to defend themselves before the crime. The trouble was that there was no way to prove it in court. If Adrienne was telling the truth, and right now, he couldn't be absolutely sure of that, her powers did constitute actual self defense, but it was totally inadmissible in court without other proof. His mind raced. What if it could be corroborated somehow? The police file had plenty of information on her husband as well; he'd been the target of an investigation at the time of his death, for links with organized crime. If he'd been planning to kill Adrienne--

"Adrienne, you have to confess." Garrison said suddenly, his voice oddly distant to his own ears as he spoke. "Denials aside, you did it, and they don't need a confession to put you away. They've got the money trail, they've got the shooter, and you were the only one with motive and knowledge of his whereabouts to provide the location where he was killed. You have to confess, otherwise there's nothing that anyone can do to help you."

It wasn't the first time she'd heard that line. 'Confess or we can't help you.' The investigators liked to say that. Her lawyers liked to say it. But the difference between hearing the the others say it and hearing Garrison say it was that she was fairly certain Garrison would actually try to help her. She trusted the Moosehead-drinking Blue Jays fan more than any of his counterparts in law enforcement, and maybe that wasn't even saying much, but if Garrison thought she could be helped by confessing she felt it would be beneficial to listen to him. At least make sure he was actually on her side. "Hypothetically," she murmured, watching him carefully, "if someone in my position was thinking about confessing, is there some particular reason why said person would do so? Some sort of plan that the person hearing the confession had in mind to help her? Or is he just looking to do his friends in the NYPD a favour by getting a confession so they can lock said person away?"

"First of all, I couldn't care less about the NYPD, Adrienne. And if I thought you should go away, the person I'd be talking to about having a murderer in the mansion is Professor Xavier." Kane retorted. It was easy to forget at times that Kane's job with the FBI, through his real agency, the RCMP, wasn't just some side gig. Garrison had joined the force because he believed in the law and the necessity of it. "If you go in, admit what you've done, people might listen. But if you keep your silence, the only thing they know about you is that you're guilty, and when they charge you, they won't care what you have to say."

Kane paused, his fingers digging into the door frame, and the wood starting to groan under his strength. "There's no certainty, Adrienne, because you did pay to have a man killed. If you trust me on this, you still might go to jail. But if you don't, I can assure you that you will be convicted, and they will throw the maximum at you. Your name, being a mutant, your money; you're the kind of case that makes political careers for putting in jail."

"I've heard all of this before, Kane," Adrienne replied, doing her best to sound bored, though she still couldn't seem to unfold herself from the foetal position she was in. "I'm not telling a bunch of investigators that my husband thought it was a fun sport to beat the hell out of me, because that's embarrassing, and even if I do tell them I saw a psychometric vision where he killed me a half-dozen different ways that won't count as self-defense. I already know that." She kept her eyes glued to his fingers on the door frame, nervous. "I want to know what you were thinking before you began telling me so suddenly a minute ago that I have to confess."

"I was thinking that you might not be a murderer. But you have to trust me that this is the only chance you have of clearing your name, Adrienne." He release the grip on the frame, letting his hand drop. "If you don't go in and explain everything, it's going to be over, and you know that. At the very least, going in means I can try to help you."

Kane's words struck Adrienne soundly and she turned away from him, overcome with a half-dozen emotions at once. A stupid sense of pride for the fact that he thought she might not be a murderer. A tiny shred of hope that his help might keep her out of jail and her company from folding under the bad publicity. Fear at the thought of confessing. Uncertainty over her future, doubt for Garrison's willingness to help her. And finally despair, as she came to finally acknowledge what she'd been avoiding admitting to herself for months. That Garrison was right: she couldn't keep this up, couldn't fix it by her own stubbornness; it was over, and she knew it.

Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut, tears of frustration gathering at the corners. When she opened them they were still shining with wetness, but she gave Garrison a nod and unfolded herself to sit properly on the couch. "Will you go with me?" she asked softly.

Garrison walked over to the couch, crouched down to look her in the eye, and touched her hand gently. "Right to the end. I promise."