AUDITORY ASSAULT

by Dreamweaver 

LMFA Nominee for "Best Humor and Best Short Story - 2006"

“Anthropology department, this is Blair Sandburg.”

“Sandburg?  Are you coming to the station today?”

“Simon?  What – has something happened to Jim?”  Blair swung his feet down from his desk and sat up straight, tossing the exam paper he’d been reading haphazardly onto the desktop.  His heart abruptly kicked into high gear with worry.  Major Crimes’ Captain Simon Banks didn’t call him frivolously, or just to chat. 

“Nothing’s happened yet – but something’s got him on the prod, and I’m getting worried.  He’s snapping and snarling at everyone, like a bear with a sore paw – has been all morning, and it’s getting worse by the minute.  ARE you coming in?”

“Well, I wasn’t; I have a lot of test papers to grade...but...”  Already Sandburg was on his feet, preparing to depart his crowded little office.  “I can be there in about 20 minutes.  Try to keep him calmed down until I get there, okay?”

“Good.  If he doesn’t settle down, either someone’s going to shoot him, or he’s going to throw one of us through a window!”  Simon hung up, leaving a very worried police observer and Guide at the other end of the line.

*****

Sandburg exited the elevator and hurried towards the entrance to Major Crimes.  He couldn’t hear any yelling...that was good, right?  Of course, when Jim got really, really angry, he didn’t yell; he got terrifyingly quiet....Blair opened the door and went in, his eyes darting around the large room in search of the Sentinel.

“Blair!  Oh, thank God!”  Rhonda’s whisper was heartfelt. 

“Simon called me,” he whispered in return.  “Where’s Jim?”

“Break room,” she breathed, adding softly, “Blair, be careful; he’s like a loaded gun with a hair-trigger!” as he swerved in the appropriate direction.  Heads lifted all about the room as the detectives watched his progress with fervent hope in their eyes.

He eased the door to the break room open slowly and carefully, half-expecting to have to duck a flying coffee cup, or worse, Jim Ellison’s fist.  But the sight that met Blair’s eyes caused him to shift from trepidation for his own skin to anxiety for his friend.  Jim was hunched over the Formica-topped table, the heels of his hands pressed tightly against his ears.  The Sentinel’s eyes were squeezed shut, and tight lines creased his face.

“Oh, man, Jim...”  Blair crossed the intervening space on tiptoe, and – although he knew it was risky to touch the ex-Ranger at the moment – reached out and laid gentle fingertips on Ellison’s arm.

The detective jumped violently, his eyes flew open, and one fist instinctively swung in Sandburg’s direction.  Blair dodged back out of reach, just in case, but Jim took in who had touched him, and sagged forward with a groan.

“Sandburg...make it stop!” he pleaded hoarsely, and slammed his palms against his ears again.

Knowing it was safe now, Blair moved swiftly to his friend’s side and put a reassuring hand on the other man’s shoulder.  “Make what stop?” he asked softly.  “What is it, Jim?”

Ellison leaned gratefully against his Guide.  He showed no surprise at Blair’s unexpected appearance, only thankfulness for the relief it offered.  “Oh God,” he murmured, “it helps so damn much when you’re here, Chief....”  A little of the tension seeped out of his body.

Sandburg rubbed his back soothingly.  “Then you should have called me as soon as things started going south,” he chided gently.  “What’s happened here, Jim?”

“Can’t you hear it?”  Jim sounded desperate.

Blair sighed.  “Maybe, if I had any idea what I was listening for,” he temporized.  “What is it?”

“I don’t KNOW, Sandburg!  I can’t identify it...and it’s driving me crazy!”  Ellison’s hands clenched again. 

“Okay, okay, okay...shhh.  Shhh.  It’s okay; we’ll get a handle on it.  Tell me what sort of sound it is.”  Blair moved his soothing massage up to the back of the Sentinel’s neck and concentrated on the tight stress-knots he found there.  “Just relax, man, it’ll be okay; we’ll deal with it, okay?”  He felt like he was babbling, but maybe Guide-babble was what Jim needed right now, something on the order of white noise, only a little more human.

“It’s a...squeaky-squeaky-thump-bang thing,” Jim said miserably.  “It’s not there all the time and sometimes it’s louder than others and sometimes there’s more than one.”

A squeaky thump?  What in the world...?  “Can’t you filter it out?” 

“Tried.  I can’t identify it, so I can’t dismiss it.  And it’s too random to get a fix on.”  Ellison’s head drooped downward under Blair’s ministrations, and he sighed as his Guide’s fingers worked their magic.

“You turned down the dial?”

“I think I have it cranked down and then bam! it hits again and knocks it back up!  I’ve been fighting it all morning!” 

“And it’s definitely in the bullpen?”

“Yeah.  It was okay when I went down to Records once – I couldn’t hear it – but as soon as I came back—”

“Do you have your white noise generators with you?  Could you try those?”

“Don’t have ‘em with me; I don’t usually need ‘em here now.”

“Jim, man – couldn’t you find something to do away from the station?”  The solution – a temporary one, at least – seemed so obvious to Blair, he wondered why in the world Jim hadn’t thought of it himself.

“Sandburg, I have work to do here!”  Jim raised his head, twisted around, and fixed the grad student with an angry glare.  “I can’t just leave because I feel like it!  And I’m not going to let a little noise drive me away!”

Blair let Jim’s ire flow past him; he knew that the Sentinel was upset with the situation, not with him.  “And are you getting the work done?” he asked mildly, and watched the anger drain from Jim’s face and his ears turn red with embarrassment.

“Uh...no,” the detective muttered.

“Did you consider telling Simon you were having trouble with something and needed to leave for awhile?  He would have found some excuse to send you out – you know he would.”

“Chief, I can’t go running to Simon every time something bothers me at the station!”  Jim turned away again, and let his head drop forward.  “Don’t stop...”

Blair shook his head in despair, but complied with the request, continuing the soothing massage. “If you were any more stubborn, you’d be yoked with 19 more just like you, hauling a freight wagon,” he murmured, rubbing gently.

Jim swiveled to face him once again, frowning slightly.  “You calling me a mule, Chief?” he asked quizzically.  Blair could see a faint twinkle in his friend’s eyes, and knew Jim wasn’t really angry any more.

“If the horseshoe fits—” Blair said, and leaped back before the expected swat could land.  But Jim’s response was half-hearted, made only for show, and he abruptly tensed again, his head tilting in his characteristic ‘listening’ pose.

“There it is again!” he hissed.

Blair listened intently, but heard nothing out of the ordinary.  “And today was the first time you’ve heard it?” he questioned, still making an attempt to pinpoint the disturbance.

“No...I’ve heard it a couple of times in the past week or so, but it’s always just this little random thing, and pretty soft. Not so intrusive.  Today, it’s....”  Jim shuddered expressively.

“Okay, the first order of business is to get you out of here so you can relax for a little while.”  Blair patted his roommate’s shoulder gently.  “I know, I know.  You have work to do,” he forestalled Jim’s automatic protest, “and I know you want to conquer this thing all on your own,” he went on, “but your way wasn’t working, man – so how about letting me try – okay?”

Jim stared down at the table, flushing again.  He knew he was simply being stubborn, and Sandburg had made a valid point.  He’d had his chance to deal with the Whatever-it-Was, and the whole of Major Crimes had seen just how well that had turned out!  “Fine,” he said grudgingly.

“Dials under control?”  Blair waited for Jim’s nod, before continuing:  “It’s close enough to lunchtime to use that as an excuse.  Give me a minute to tell Simon you’re leaving.  I’ll pick up your jacket – you have your phone, right?  You stay here and turn that hearing down to about three notches below normal, so you can walk through the bullpen without going nuts.”  He grinned a little.  “Sit facing the door so no one can sneak up on you.  I’ll be right back.”

As he hurried towards the captain’s office, Sandburg cast hasty looks around the bullpen, trying to spot anything that might conceivably make squeaky-thumping noises, but offhand he didn’t notice anything unusual.  Jim had said it had been there for several days, only increasing in volume and frequency, so it couldn’t be something brand-new....”Captain?”  He poked his head around the edge of Banks’ half-open door.

“Well?”  A testy tone and a forbidding scowl was his reception.

“It’s something auditory,” Blair said without preamble.  “I don’t know what, yet, but I’m getting Jim out of here for awhile so that he can settle down a little.  With luck he can get back to work this afternoon.”

“Auditory?”  Banks’ scowl lightened to a puzzled frown.  “He’s hearing something that bothers him that much?”

“Apparently so.  I can’t hear it, so I doubt that anyone else does, either.  But Jim can.”

‘All right, Sandburg, take him and welcome.  Fix it.”  Simon waved a dismissive hand, and went back to his paperwork.

Blair exited, pausing by Ellison’s desk to grab his jacket.  He headed for the break room, breezily greeting the other detectives with waves and nods, but not stopping to chat as he usually did.  “Rafe...hey, Joel.  H, my man, lookin’ good.”  He found his roommate looking a little better – still tense, but under control.  “C’mon, let’s get outta here.” 

*****

Sitting on the park bench and munching a foot-long hot dog, Jim sighed with relief.  He’d known he was stressed from trying to track down the elusive thump-squeak noise in the bullpen, but he hadn’t realized just how tense and upset he actually had been until it eased off.  Beside him, Sandburg was contemplatively chewing his own hot dog and admiring the scenery – various young women strolling along the park paths on their lunch hours.

“Pretty good idea, here, Chief.”  Jim took another bite.

“I do come up with them occasionally, you know,” Blair reminded him dryly. 

“I know you do.  Now I suppose you’re going to tell me I ought to listen to you more often, right?”

“Nah...no sense beating a dead horse.”

Jim huffed a little.  “Sandburg, I’m getting a little tired of the equine analogies, here!  First you call me a mule, now a horse!  What’s next?”

Blair snickered.  “I dunno, Jim...about the only thing left is a zebra, and I can’t figure any connection.”

Ellison eyed him warily over his hot dog.  “Don’t try,” he warned, but he chuckled too.

“We need to try and figure out what that noise in the bullpen is.”  Sandburg changed the subject abruptly.

“I know...but I was enjoying not having to think about it for a few minutes,” Ellison grumbled.

“Jim, I’m not letting you back in there until we come up with a solution for the noise, whether we know what’s causing it, or not,” Blair vowed. 

“Not letting me, Junior?  Like I said before, I have a job to do—”  Jim broke off as his cell phone rang.  “Ellison!”  He listened for a few moments, making ‘uh-huh’ and ‘yeah’ and ‘okay’ noises in response to whatever the person on the other end was saying.  Finally he said “Okay, sir, got it.  We’re on it,” and ended the call.  He quirked an amused eyebrow at his roommate.  “How’d you do it?”

“Do what?”  The grad student eyed him inquisitively.  “And what are ‘we’ on?”

“Simon’s sending me on a carjacking case that just came up, so I don’t have to go back to the station after lunch.”

“Yeah, all right Simon!”  Sandburg punched a fist into the air in triumph, and took another bite of his lunch.  “See, I told you he’d help if you gave him a chance, Jim!”

“Yeah, yeah, okay....Well, what about it?  You’re supposed to be over at Rainier grading tests, aren’t you?  Do you have time to come with me?  Or should I drop you back at the precinct so you can get your car?”

Blair considered it carefully.  “You think you’d be okay if I don’t come?”

“Yes, mom, I’ll be just fine!”  Jim grumbled.

“Well, I really should get some more work done, and you probably don’t need me tagging along for carjacking interviews....How about if you drop me at Rainier and I’ll grade tests until 5:30 or so.  Or later.  Or earlier, depending on your schedule.  You pick me up when you’re done in the field, and then we’ll go back to the station and figure out what’s going on in the bullpen, when there aren’t so many people around.”

Ellison eyed him with surprise.  “Not a bad idea,” he conceded.  “That’s two today, Einstein, you’re on a roll!”

Blair shook his head sadly.  “I’m definitely not feeling the love here,” he complained.  “You’re entirely too shocked that I’m coming up with solutions to problems!”

Jim grinned and ruffled his hair, and demolished his hot dog with a couple of gargantuan bites.  “Come on, finish up your lunch,” he mumbled,  “I’ve got a carjacking to investigate.”

*****

It was after six by the time Ellison and Sandburg made it back to the precinct.  Although theoretically there was an evening shift in Major Crimes, more often than not, it consisted merely of one or two people from the day shift working late – and frequently there was no one around at all.  Such was the case when Jim and Blair walked into the bullpen: it was dark and deserted, except for themselves.

Jim entered the room warily; he’d been scanning for any hint of the mysterious, unsettling noise ever since he’d gotten off the elevator, but nothing manifested.  He felt Blair’s hand against his back, and leaned slightly into his Guide’s comforting presence.

“Anything?”  Blair breathed, flipping the switch for the overhead fluorescent panels.

Ellison dialed up his hearing cautiously and made a face.  “One of those lights is going to go out pretty soon,” he predicted.  “It’s buzzing.”

Sandburg grinned.  “Leave a note for the custodian.”  He settled onto the corner of the nearest desk, which happened to be Rafe’s.  “Okay, we’ve got the best chance to figure it out now, when there’s no one here but us.”

“I wonder if it’s something that someone carries,” Jim mused, “since I don’t hear it now.  Comes in and goes home with them.”

“Oh man, don’t even think that!  How could you explain having to avoid someone in the department because of the way they sound?!  Besides, don’t you think you’d have noticed if it stopped when somebody left?” 

“Right.  So we look harder in here.”  Jim squared his shoulders decisively. 

“Do you remember when you first noticed it?”  Blair queried.  He was sitting quietly and gazing wide-eyed around the bullpen, hoping to spot something new and different.

“No...and like I said earlier, at first it was soft and not very intrusive.  It was just today that it hit like a ton of bricks.”

“You were off yesterday and the day before,” Sandburg reminded the Sentinel.  “So it made more of an impact when you came back.”   He inspected his surroundings.  “It’s probably something mechanical, with the noise you described.”

“That doesn’t help a lot, Chief.  There’s a ton of mechanical stuff in here.”  Ellison began prowling the perimeter of the room, head cocked at an angle as he searched for the mysterious sound. 

Blair continued his visual survey, doing his best to remember what had been sitting on peoples’ desks for ages and what might have appeared recently.

He stared thoughtfully at Henri Brown’s desk.  The big detective had been accumulating a collection of sorts, and it was apparently complete now.  The Cascade Jaguars basketball team had issued a series of ‘bobble-head’ figurines made to look like current and former team members, giving them away at selected home games, and Brown was determined to own the whole set.  He’d been putting them out one at a time as he acquired them, but now all ten were there, ranged in a row along the edge of his desk.  Orvelle Wallace was the first in line, followed by Sloman, Petty, Coach Brianski, Henderson, the late Dwight Roshman, and four others. 

Blair smiled reflectively, remembering his and Jim’s interaction with the players on a couple of cases, and he reached out and gently tapped Orvelle Wallace’s head.

“THERE IT IS!”  Jim spun around.  “I heard it! What is it?”  His eyes narrowed and he honed in on the jiggling toy.  “It’s THOSE THINGS!”  He stalked across the bullpen, fury etched on his face.  “It’s THOSE!”

“Jim – Jim, man, calm down.”  Blair leaped to his feet and pressed both hands against the detective’s chest, halting his progress.

“I am going to destroy them!” Ellison hissed, a vengeful light in his ice-blue eyes.  “I’m going to decapitate every single one of their evil little heads – and then I’m going to kill Brown!”  He shoved against Sandburg, trying to reach the desk.

“Jim!  You can’t!”  Blair pushed back, harder.  “H loves those things!  It took him a long time to get them!  Heck, we even got a couple of them for him, remember?  You can’t destroy his collection, man!”

Ellison stood still, but was quite evidently still seething.  “Sandburg, those damn things are gonna drive me out of my mind!  They’ve got to go!”

“Okay, okay.  Chill, man.  Jim, chill out.”  Blair steered the aggravated Sentinel to a chair and forcibly sat him in it.  “Now that you know what it is, can you filter it out?”

Jim closed his eyes briefly in concentration., then scowled and shook his head.  “Too random.  They make the noise when someone brushes them, if the desk is joggled, maybe even air currents...and it varies as to how much vibration.  They don’t all jiggle at the same time.”  He opened his eyes and stared up at his Guide beseechingly.  “Chief, let me kill ‘em, please?  They’re evil!”

“NO!”  Blair began to laugh...and once he started, he had a hard time stopping.  “You can’t kill them, Jim!  It would be like murder!”  he sputtered.  “You know these people personally, man!   Just look at their little faces!”

Ellison gave the bobble-heads a nasty look, but Blair’s mirth was contagious.  The room echoed with their whoops of laughter; each time one or the other would manage to stop, their eyes would meet and they would dissolve into hysterical giggles again.

Finally they succeeded in calming down a little.  Jim managed a deep breath and an equally deep sigh.  “Okay, then what do we do with ‘em, Chief?”  He eyed the figures malevolently.  “Couldn’t I just...maim them a little?” he entreated.

Blair’s eyes twinkled.  “You wouldn’t be able to sleep at night for guilt,” he prophesied.  “They’d haunt you with their sad eyes and squeaky little voices....’Jim!  Why did you hurt us, Jim?  We didn’t do anything to you, Jim...’  AGGH!” he broke off with a shriek as the detective lunged at him, fingers flexed to tickle well-known sensitive spots.  “Okay, okay...I yield!  I’ll stop!”  He sat back down and surveyed the toys, who smiled blandly back at him, heads bobbing merrily.

“Maybe we can muffle them somehow,” Jim suggested.  “Stick cotton balls inside their heads...or oil the springs.”

“I think that would work,” Sandburg conceded.  “H would notice, though.”

“I’ll explain it to him,” Ellison said grimly.  “I’ll tell him we were afraid they’d wear out, and we’re trying to protect them.”

The grad student looked at him admiringly.  “You’re becoming real good at obfuscation, Jim!  I’m impressed!”

“That’s a frightening thought.  But it’s because I’ve had a really competent teacher.”

“Now, where can we get cotton balls and glue in a hurry...?” Sandburg mused.  “Glue we might have in here, but cotton balls?”

“First aid kit in the break room,” Jim said, and strode off to get the desired articles.  “And if there isn’t any there, I’ll make a fast run to the nearest convenience store!  There’s a little bottle of gun oil in my bottom desk drawer, Sandburg; get it out and give each of those little critters a drop or two.”

The partners worked feverishly to complete their clandestine task before anyone else dropped into Major Crimes to see why the lights were on.  Blair carefully dripped oil on the springs of each little figure, and Jim followed him, armed with tweezers, cotton and Superglue.  Forty-five minutes later, they put away their supplies, then stood back and admired their handiwork.

“There.”  Ellison’s tone held great satisfaction at a job well done.

“They still wiggle just a little bit,” Sandburg noted, lightly tapping Coach Brianski’s head.  “Does it bother you now?”

“Nope!  The cotton muffles it – thank God!”  Jim shuddered.  “And thank you, Chief,” he went on, draping an affectionate arm about Blair’s shoulders and squeezing hard.  “I was going nuts this morning – and you saved the day.  Again.”

“I’m just glad I could help.”  Blair leaned into his Sentinel’s embrace.  “I’m always afraid that something’s going to come up that I can’t deal with – that I can’t help you with,” he sighed. 

“You’ve done all right so far – and I’ve got a lot of faith in you.  You’ll do just fine.”  Ellison gave him another squeeze, just as an unmistakable rumble sounded from the region of Blair’s stomach.  Jim glanced at his wristwatch.  “Sounds like you need a little sustenance, Chief.  Come on, let’s get out of here.  It’s time for dinner – and I’m buying!”

Finis

Disclaimer:  The Sentinel is the property of Pet Fly Production and UPN.  We've only borrowed the characters for a few frolics in the sun.  
We promise to return them where we found them when we're done.