Keeping It in the Family (Linstead)

Keeping 38

Alvin Olinsky took no pleasure in what he said to say. "We're missing several people from the Martinez crew. Some are likely back at the house, but..."

"Did we get Martinez or not?" Lindsay snapped at him, the tension taking it's toll on her patience.

"No. And we didn't get Raquel Gonzalez or Manu Diaz either. They go everywhere Martinez goes, so they would have been there."

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Lindsay raged. With the final exclamation, she hurled the phone that she had used during the undercover operation at the wall. It disappointingly refused to explode into a hundred pieces, or indeed any pieces. It just clattered to the floor.

Halstead was somewhat surprised by the furious outburst, but he certainly shared the frustration. So much hard work had gone into putting Martinez behind bars, only for her to escape the raid.

"How the hell did you let that happen?" Lindsay demanded of Olinsky.

"We hit the front and the back, succeeding in taking them by surprise. But when the shooting started, Martinez used it as cover to get out of a side door, a fire escape. Burgess went after them and fired shots. She's confident she hit Gonzalez in the arm, but they managed to lose her. I shot one man in the warehouse, and Purrazzo shot another. They're both dead."

"I didn't want a couple of heavies on slabs, I wanted Martinez behind bars!" Lindsay thundered.

Olinsky clearly didn't like being berated. Halstead could sympathise with that. Lindsay was going in a bit hard for his liking. "We did what we could. We had previous little time to get there, and essentially none to prepare our assault. If that side door hadn't been there we would have had them."

"That sounds like a bunch of excuses. Can I assume you've at least put a BOLO out for them? Not that it will matter, they'll be halfway to Mexico by now."

"Yes, ma'am," Olinsky said tensely.

Lindsay took a moment to try and compose herself. "Right, get back to Intelligence and assemble everyone. I want a full run down of this mess when I get there."

"Right," Olinsky said, promptly opening the door and leaving.

"Erin..." Halstead said once the door was closed. His intention had been to calm her down, but she blew up again.

"Two months, Jay! Two months of work down the fucking toilet!"

"I know, Er. I'm pissed off too. But the team did what they could in the situation they were presented with. I don't doubt that, and I'm sure you don't either. They're all going to be pissed that we didn't get Martinez."

"You're telling me not to be hard on them, is that it?" Lindsay demanded, standing with her hands on her hips. "I hope you're going to say the same to Superintendent Kelton when he comes down here to tear strips off me over this thing?"

Now Halstead was getting annoyed with her, adding to his own frustration over the blown mission. "You heard what I said. You keep talking about wanting to do better with man management. Maybe you should actually start putting it into action?"

With that he stormed out of the room and banged the door shut behind him. In a way he felt bad as soon as he had done it, but at the same time he felt like he had said something that had needed to be said. Lindsay walking into Intelligence and flying off the handle at people who had done their best in far from ideal circumstances was not what was needed, at least in his opinion.

Both professionally and personally, he wanted Lindsay to succeed at her job. But he couldn't make her lead the team the way he would. When all was said and done, she was the sergeant. He was a detective on her team. If she was determined to be a boss who tried to draw performance from her people by fear of a roasting rather than by inspiring a sense of loyalty and teamwork, then that was the way it would be.