Case 16 - Thorny Dutch Rose

<Events before The Rookie S1E12, Modern Family S9E13, SWAT S1E10>

After meeting everybody he considered family or the closest thing to it for two days and spending some more time with Haley, Ben met up with the police officers of Mid-Wilshire in a bar just after Christmas was over.

After saying goodbye to everybody at the bar, an expensive looking SUV with tinted glasses stopped in front of Ben and the man on the passenger seat got out of the car, opened the door to the back and pointed a gun at Ben, ordering him to get inside.

In a practiced fashion, Ben pretended to stagger and disarmed the man, but just then, the driver shot with his silenced pistol near Ben's feet before pointing it back at Ben's head.

Knowing that he had to give up, Ben disassembled the pistol and threw it away down an alley to his back and moved to the open door of the car.

A gorgeous brunette in her late 30s sat in the back in a luxurious red pant suit she was leisurely scrolling around on a tablet PC and ordered, "Please sit, Detective Weiss. This won't be long, and we mean you no harm," the woman ordered with a noticeable Dutch accent.

<Cast: Carice van Houten as Smit>

"Miss Smit?" Ben asked with an unsure frown as he stood next to the car for a moment.

"You did your homework. But please, call me Carice. Now sit."

Looking back and forth down the street, Ben complied and sat next to the woman.

"I would have preferred you not do that with my associate's gun," the brunette chided in a low voice. "Do not bother picking it up for evidence later. It will have been gone."

"I would have picked it up so a random kid doesn't find it and hurt himself," Ben countered with a frown.

"Just as well. I do not like pistols either," Clarice pondered out loud before she shook her head and finally looked Ben in the eyes as the car started moving.

"I came here to thank you. Antje is alive and well thanks to you. No need to look at me like that - her rescue was dear to my heart and needed to be handled by professionals. No doubt you have by now made up your mind about what it is my husband and I do for a living?"

Ben narrowed his eyes a little as he stayed entirely alert, measuring his every word.

"I have my suspicions. Especially after how you got your daughter back. I'm glad she is safe, by the way."

"Mhm, that she is. I have learned that it was you stopped her from bleeding out in that hangar. Therefore, you have earned me coming here myself. I can not believe that Anders would be reckless enough to not only abduct my little girl but also allow her to be shot," Clarice narrated with a detached voice as she stared at the traffic ahead.

"I was wondering how someone in your supposed profession would let her daughter go to another country without bodyguards. So you knew the coach?"

"This isn't a conversation where you need to fish for more information. My husband and I are untouchable," Clarice argued in a small voice that somehow commanded Ben's full attention. "His death, Ander's death, came a little too easy for my liking..."

"You can't say stuff like that right after telling me I shouldn't fish for more information," Ben lightly quipped and finally got an emotion out of Clarice.

She smiled a little.

"Now. Are you not worrying about what I might gift you for the saving grace you bestowed upon my family? I do only have that one daughter, and I'm very fond of her," Clarice inquired as she kept the smile and turned to Ben.

"I don't do this for gifts. In fact, I prefer not getting one..."

"I'm afraid this is nonrefundable. Well, I suppose you can just not use it," Carice pondered out loud and handed Ben the tablet she was playing around on. "Take a look."

Ben did as he was told and immediately furrowed his brows. He was swiping and swiping through a gallery of pictures filled with evidence. Evidence for a massive drug smuggling organisation.

"Are you trying to use me to get rid of the competition?" Ben asked in a quiet tone.

"Think whatever you want to think, Detective Weiss. These people are who paid off my daughter's bodyguard, and I want them to hurt. Would you not prefer taking them into custody and closing a major drug ring over me ordering a bunch of thugs to shoot up the port and those stash houses? I personally have no scruples about the loss of life among these cretins. I'd like to not have more civilian deaths on my conscience, however."

"... I will have to disclose who I got it from and the circumstances that led to this. I will also have to not work this case... so while it may benefit the people of LA, I won't get much out of it aside from getting on a federal watchlist through my association to a known drug king pin."

"Ah, such a righteous man. Do what you must, Detective Weiss. I already told you my husband and I are untouchable. You will not find me on any passenger list or in the feed of any camera, so nobody will be able to verify that I was even in Los Angeles. On the contrary, there will be hundreds of people and a dozen pictures confirming my attendance at a ball in Switzerland. Which, of course, will lead to this evidence being tainted by you 'lying'. And don't even bother trying to get fingerprints."

Carice took off the thinnest gloves Ben had ever seen with a small grin and turned her head again to look at the traffic.

"This feels less and less like a gift," Ben muttered under his breath and continued to study the screenshots, documents, and video feeds on the tablet. He had to admit to himself that he was impressed by how thorough it was.

But Ben was stunned when he noticed something in a video. He couldn't believe his eyes and didn't want to give anything away, so he didn't rewind the video to check again. He would do that later.

"You may keep the tablet. It is a factory new tablet with nothing except for the files on it, so don't bother checking for possible data on me or anything," Carice advised, and the car slowed down. Instead of checking where they were, Ben turned to the woman who seemed to have answers for everything.

"I'm sorry, but there's no way I would not check it," Ben retorted with a lifted eyebrow.

"There is no listening malware on it or anything similar. I told you it was a gift. You should be a little more trusting," Carice sighed. "Now. Out with you. There's a ball I need to attend in half an hour, and a girl needs some time to get ready."

Ben, seeing the driver pointing his silenced pistol in his direction again, did as he was told and got out of the car. Once more, Ben was stunned. They were parked right in front of his house.

"Beterschap voor je dochter Anna. [Speedy recovery {Get well soon} for your daughter Anna]."

Ben looked back at Carice with a tight frown and immediately got out his phone to call the hospital.

"Dit was een bezoek in goed vertrouwen. Het gaat goed met uw dochter. [This was a visit in good faith. Your daughter is fine.]" The woman chided with another deep sigh and ordered the driver to get out.

He didn't have much to drink that night, just enough to say he shouldn't drive. As such, Ben went into the house and down into the basement after seeing both Emilia and Zofia weren't home.

Zofia was working at the Pritchett house as a babysitter, and, well, Ben didn't know where Emilia was. The nurse he reached at the hospital checked on Anna for him, told him she was completely fine but sleeping, and there had been no signs of Emilia since she started her shift.

[Emilia Caster commentary scene change]

"Who knew how unreasonable drug lords can be? Even the nice ones selling flowers are apparently nuts. I shouldn't have been surprised, I suppose... but Carice Smit is one crazy, unpredictable bitch. Despite my hopes that the mission was over after having Antje safely put on that helicopter, I was tasked with something I was much better at than killing in my opinion. Investigating. Well, and one kidnapping for one of the higher ups of one of the Chinese triads operating in LA."

Emilia shook her head for a moment and explained, "They already had most of the shipping details and the location of that whoring asshole by some miracle. Well, it wasn't a miracle. It was a warning that I wasn't the only one working on this for the Smits. In any case, I was simply tasked to record some handovers, steal a ship manifest... these kinds of things that didn't make me fear holding my baby with bloodied hands. It still couldn't have come at a worse time with Anna in the hospital, but the extra they promised was enough to take a long, long time off. Pretending to be a prostitute and drugging that addled son of a triad boss was my final mission for a while."

With a wistful smile she added, "With Carice Smit out of the country, I can finally relax a little and spend some time with Anna. I already told the woman I want nothing to do with her quest for revenge in the US when I handed that guy over and she accepted rather easily. Her face when she entered the room of the hostage, however, was pretty unsettling."

Emilia sighed with a forlon look.

"I wonder, is this how Ben felt while undercover? That he was no longer enitrely in control of his own actions and how that turned him into something he wasn't?"

[Commentary ended]

Ben, despite being a little buzzed from his night out, sat in his basement with the tablet connected to a computer that wasn't in any network. Logging no outgoing traffic to a cellular network or attempts to get traffic through the dummy network card on the computer, as well as seeing no unexplained background processes doing anything, Ben relaxed a little and got back to sifting through the data.

He began with the video that made his heartbeat quicken considerably earlier in the car.

After some work on it, Ben got the answer he was dreading.

"Four frames, faint reflection... it could be anyone," Ben mumbled under his breath with a lost expression, trying to find a reasonable excuse for what he was seeing. "And if it is her... she could be just a private investigator with no knowledge about who she's working for and what it is she is recording... Do I confront her or not?"

Ben stared at the reflection of Emilia in a passing car visible for just four frames for almost half an hour before he deleted that part of the video.

Just as he was compiling the files and sending it to Commander Hicks from SWAT to ask how he should handle it, Zofia came downstairs.

"Hey, Ben. Did you have a nice night?"

Hiding his unease quickly, Ben gave Zofia a reassuring smile.

"Yep. Everything is fine. How was your day at the Pritchetts?"

"Gloria is a very nice woman, and Joe is a cute boy," his adopted sister remarked with a sweet smile.

"And Jay?"

"He was very awkward around me," Zofia admitted as her smile turned wry. "And I was awkward with him."

"Give it time. He's a little old-fashioned, but I think he's a genuinely nice guy."

"I think so, too," Zofia agreed and went behind Ben to give him a hug.

"You alright there?" Ben asked in a quiet voice as he gently brushed her arm.

"You are a miracle," Zofia whispered into his ear as her hug tightened. "Thank you, Benny, for being such a good big brother."

Inwardly celebrating the fact that she started acknowledging his efforts enough to finally accept that they were now siblings, Ben reached behind him and hugged Zofia as best he could in that position.

"How are your studies going? Alex gave you most of her high school notes and study guides as a Christmas present, right?"

"Loaned, but she did. It was very sweet of her," Zofia corrected. "And it's fine. I'm definitely getting the diploma by summer... I have to."

"You don't have to, Zofia. I will not think lesser of you if you take another half a year. You're learning an entire school curriculum in a foreign language. Don't be so hard on yourself," Ben reassured in a small voice but Zofia shook her head that was still next to his because of the hug.

"I will become teacher before little Anna goes to school, believe it."

Ben's smile turned cheerful, so he pressed send on the email to SWAT Commander Hicks and stood up, effectively taking Zofia on a piggy back ride upstairs.

"You hungry?" He asked with a big smile.

-----

The next morning, Ben sat with Anna and Zofia in the hospital. The three were coloring in a book for a while.

"Daddy, blue!" Anna excitedly shouted and Ben handed over the blue pencil to his daughter and watched her pretty much destroy the page with her eager hand movements as she made it all blue.

Ever since the little girl started getting better she had more energy than before and got excited by the littlest of things.

Oh, and she started calling him daddy, which just melted his heart.

"What is my little Picasso drawing there?" Emilia asked as she entered the room quietly and Ben's expression turned worried under the facemask he was wearing for Anna's protection.

He still hadn't decided on whether or not he should confront Emilia about his findings. It had kept him up all night. Since Carice Smit knew about his address and his girl - what was stopping her from editting the video to show his baby's mother in four frames of a video just to mess with him?

But it did explain her constant unexplained absence this time, as well as her wounds that she recovering suspiciously fast from.

Confronting Emilia was a lose-lose in any scenario Ben could think of. Either she was what he suspected and he would have to live with that knowledge or she wasn't and his allegation could cause a rift that would upset the balance and keep his daughter out of his life.

But the more he looked at Anna's happy smiling face as she got better every day, Ben firmed his resolve. The possibility of Emilia doing such dangerous work, snooping around drug operations without the safety net of law enforcement and getting as banged up as she did the day before Christmas Eve...

It was a little hypocritical of him since his home had been tagged by racists thrice and he still considered moving, but he still asked Emilia to step outside as the two left Anna and Zofia in her clean room.

"What can I do for you, Ben?" Emilia asked but Ben looked around a little more to confirm they were alone.

"I really tried not saying anything, but I can't sit on it anymore after Carice Smit dropped me off at my home yesterday," Ben began and studied Emilia's expression. Seeing her brief surprise and worry, Ben knew he was on the right track.

"You have every right to live your life as you please, but the woman you have been working for is dangerous and unpredictable. I'm not sure if she knows of our relationship, but she knows about Anna, and I'm worried what might happen if you continue working for her and... fail a mission or something?" Ben unsurely continued, hoping he wouldn't alienate Emilia and have her flee with Anna.

"You know about my work for Carice?" Emilia asked with a pale face.

"You might not know, but Antje Smit, she was among the fourteen abducted girls from my last case. Carice's only daughter. I saved her life when we found her by making sure she didn't bleed out... she brought over a cache of data on her competition as a 'gift'... I saw your face in a reflection..."

[Emilia Caster commentary scene change]

"Oh my god! I almost blurted out that I could explain the killings! He doesn't know about that!" Emilia celebrated with a disbelieving look. "He thinks I'm just a private eye? Nice!"

[Commentary ended]

"No worries, I met this Carice woman once and I'll never answer another phone call of hers!" Emilia immediately agreed. "You weren't mentioned once in our correspondence... so I'm not sure how she learned about your address or Anna. I'm also not sure she knows I'm her mother..."

"Phew, you're taking this much better than I suspected. I was worried you'd call me a hypocrite since I attract plenty of enemies myself through my job and could endanger Anna just as much as you could with such a dangerous clientele," Ben remarked with a sigh of relief before he sent a worried look Emilia's way. "Did you know that you were observing a branch of the Chinese Triad? Those are dangerous people..."

"No worries, I never got onto their radar," Emilia reassured Ben, though her smile faltered a little.

[Emilia Caster commentary scene change]

"I should be glad he didn't figure out the whole truth... but why do I feel even worse now? He was so caring, so understanding... he deserves better," Emilia groaned out with a guilty look.

[Commentary ended]

-----

The day before New Year's Eve, Ben was allowed to take Anna out of the hospital, provided they kept her environment clean for a little longer and regularly checked her temperature and signs of infections. Her little body had accepted Ben's bone marrow remarkably well and was recuperating faster than the doctors had hoped.

"Anna!" Chris greeted cheerfully, waiting outside Ben's house.

The little girl gave Chris an equally happy giggle but ran past her through the garage and into the yard. Now that she had a little more stamina than before, running around was her favorite new hobby, no matter how winded she got after short distances.

Emilia went into the house on her own to pack away Anna's belongings while Ben and Chris followed Anna into the yard.

"Didn't you tell me you have a date?" Ben asked with his hands around Chris' shoulder.

"Ugh, I broke up with the nurse now that Anna is out of the hospital," Chris countered with a fed-up expression.

"Wait, is that the real reason?" Ben inquired with a small laugh.

"Real enough. I didn't want to see her whenever I visited Anna while she was pissed or whatever, so I stuck around."

"I'm so sorry you had to suffer through that," Ben mockingly apologized, and Chris hit his chest.

"You should be sorry!"

"I know for a fact that girl models, so if you just kept it physical you definitely weren't on the losing side," Ben countered with a smirk and watched Anna run circles in the garden while making happy noises.

"She thinks 9/11 was an inside job, that there are mole people living in the sewers and she brought both of those nut case conspiracy theories up unprompted after I didn't rebuff her the first time. It got worse every time," Chris argued with an exasperated sigh.

"Wait. What?"

[Nurse commentary scene change]

"I'm terrible at breaking up with people. Chris is a lovely girl, but she wasn't what I was looking for," the pretty nurse argued.

"First, I made our sex all about me, but Chris didn't seem to mind at all... so I tried out some conspiracy theories my meth head uncle keeps talking about during family meetings... and she didn't tell me to shut up once. I think she might be a little nuts, honestly. Oh god, she's a SWAT officer and believes in mole people! Should I report that or something???"

[Commentary ended]