2020-07-20 - Welcome Interrogation

Monday afternoon at the GHPD. The building wasn't originally constructed with the police department in mind, nor the FD headquarters which are attached. Most of the offices line the edges of the second floor with bullpens of open work spaces set through the center, a break space here and there, restrooms, and all the cocky oneupsmanship that the collegiality -- as it were -- the thin blue line entertains while working together in circumstances of varying degrees of stress. Most of the detectives and specialists work up here. Downstairs are the typical spaces like booking, evidence, interrogation rooms, some cells along with locker rooms and all the rest.

Dr. Olivia Kincaid, the Criminal Psychologist at large (sometimes termed 'forensic'), has an office (with a door and everything!) given the fact that she meets with officers nearly as much as she deals with the criminal element and crime scenes. She's only been working here at the GHPD for a little over a month (and there are all sorts of rumors to hear, depending on who one asks), but as she leans a shoulder against the outer frame of her office door, bandying about some playful derision with a detective, she looks quite comfortable in her blue skirt and grey sweater, belted to make it less feminine and more tailored, her badge hanging from her belt.

"You tell Simmons that I won that bet the last time," she calls to a detective who is heading away from where she's standing. "Yeah yeah, Kincaid," the salty-haired detective replies as he continues walking. "Your luck can't last forever. 'specially if you're gonna go 'round getting eviscerated every time you take a walk." Olivia folds her arms across her chest and shakes her head with an amused smile that sparkles in her glacier-blue eyes. From there she slowly scans the work that is going on in the open, partly divided cubicles that are arranged in groups of four desks.

It is Monday and Milo is at the GHPD for his first day of his internship. After signing in at the front desk he gets directions of where to find Olivia's office. The young man wears what he hopes is professional enough attire, a brown tweed vest over a light blue button down shirt with a burgundy tie showing above the trim. Dark navy slacks and brown dress shoes. As he nears the woman's office he hears the exchange, glancing towards the man that she is bantering with and then back towards her office as she is observing the people around her. There is a brown leather portfolio case tucked under one arm as he is close enough to her doorway now to possibly be noticed. "Dr. Kincaid."

Milo would wait until she looks in his direction before extending his hand of the arm that didn't have the portfolio tucked underneath. "Milo Hartwell." He assumed if she was indeed Dr. Kincaid she would have been informed of his internship so didn't waste either of their times with that piece of information. "It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am." He looked every bit of his young 21 years. However, there was also a confidence and energy to his excitement as well. Which meant he would either thrive here...or it would eat him alive.

Olivia's speculative gaze wanders the dynamics and individuals of the floor, unhurried, only to find Milo approaching from perhaps a half dozen feet away, looking dapper and so very young. She pushes away from the door frame and straightens. Flat-footed she'd be taller than the man. In her heels she's got a good four or five inches on him. But there's no posturing to her poised stance. He clearly is approaching her rather than moving past her, his temporary ID badge clipped wherever it's clipped. They'll have the permanent one for him bearing his photo and rank by the end of the day. She flickers a blue-eyed glance down at the name on that ID and back up to the man as he speaks her name.

Reaching out with a slender hand whose nails are manicured short she grasps his hand, her skin soft, her grip firm. "Hartwell," she muses for a moment, then sketches her brows upward. "The intern?" She doesn't immediately release his hand unless he drags it free. Her skin is warm but not hot or damp. "Welcome to the GHPD, Hartwell." It's true. Blood in the water at the precinct. One earns a spot or is torn apart by the predation of the mostly-male demographic of posturing and soaking of the darker things the law enforcement world has to offer. Even in Gray Harbor. Especially in Gray Harbor.

Olivia's mildly warm expression doesn't quite veil the sharply assessing nature of her attention as she sketches an efficient but unhurried look over the man as if determining just what he could go up against in a physical confrontation and come out the other side. But that perusal gives her a taste of his glimmer as well; she dips her chin once in acknowledgement of it. "Have they run you through orientation yet, or are you just now taking your first promenade through the rank and file?" The question that lies beneath is whether or not he has been assigned a spot and a list of tasks or if he's seeking her out to provide him with said home-base and tasks.

Finally releasing the man's hand she gestures toward her open office in invitation. The room with the windowless door is longer and more narrow than one would expect, with a cluster of three, leather, club chairs encountered first -- with a half dozen potted plants staged subtlely around the space -- a trio of filing cabinets along the wall, and a neatly kept desk with a closed laptop computer atop it along with an insulated mug, a leather portfolio open to a legal pad atop which a fountain pen is capped. The solitary window in the office is beside the desk and it looks out onto ... an alley, the dirty brickwork of the building adjacent really the only view unless one presses one's face up against the window to look one way or the other down the alley.

Milo would keep a firm but not overly so grip on her hand during the handshake, releasing it a moment before she does so as not to make her uncomfortable or overstep the authority ladder. It is almost as if he has read the hand book on proper introduction...or a blog article. "Yes, ma'am. First day reporting and no prior orientation." Fresh meat swimming! Following her into the office he would take a look around it, noting certain decorations or the way that specific items were arranged. Much with the same observing glance she had given to him just a few moments ago. "I like your view." The tone isn't said with any irony. He looks back to Olivia and offers a smile, "I brought my portfolio." He hands the book out to her then. "It has a list of the courses I've completed at university and the ones I still have yet to study. As well as a few references and other documents for your records." He wasn't sure that she'd require them or even need everything he included, but better safe than sorry.

Olivia follows Milo into the office, her steps fluid and poised. The area rug mutes the clicking of her heels on the otherwise hard floor. "Have a seat, Hartwell," she invites and suggests at once. Then she skims around the outside of the trio of comfortable chairs and takes a seat in one adjacent to his (they're all adjacent, really). "First day, pre-orientation. You must be full of questions," she hypothesizes, reaching for the portfolio he offers to rest it atop her knees where her skirt doesn't quite reach.

"Why don't you start by telling me what you expect from this internship." Perhaps it's usually the other way around, but Olivia does things her own way. There's a sense of stillness to her, a peaceful calm; added to that there's something minatory to her easy manner, watching the tiniest of details, soaking them all in. She'll likely look at the information in the portfolio beneath her fingertips, but for now there is a feel of an interview to the conversation, despite the fact that he already has the internship. Who is he? What does he want from this? Where does he want to leverage himself to be when he's through? What will he say when asked an open-ended question? Her red lips curve to a small, inclusive smile that is probably meant to put the young man at ease.

When she invites him to sit he does so, hands moving to rest on top of either knee as he watches her sit across from him. "I'm always full of questions, ma'am" Milo admits with a small smirk, the gesture showing the first sign of nerves that the young man is currently battling. "My father says it's a good thing I wasn't born a cat." Then he is being prompted to give his expectations. That was different! Especially from his classes where the teachers just told him what to expect or what was expected of him each new class. "Honestly, ma'am. I want to learn what I don't know."

His blue eyes are bright from behind his glasses as Milo answers honestly. "Reading. Researching. Passing all of the classes at my university won't give me the knowledge that working with people like you, who do this every day, will provide. I want to learn what I think I know that and really have no idea. I want to realize what my misconceptions are. I hope to be able to take this opportunity and use it to best help other people by the time I'm ready to pursue an actual career." Milo reaches a hand up to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, "Also, if I may speak directly, I can already tell I can expect you to be completely honest with me...and I am glad for that."

Even that: even his posture, the way he arranges himself in the leather chair is observed, noted somewhere. This woman doesn't need a recording device or even notes. It is clear that this is what she does, and has done for some years now. Still, she takes the road of invitation, an inquisitive flavor to her conversation, as if there is something innately valuable to Milo that doesn't need to be put to words. "Curious cats do have terrible fates," she agrees obliquely.

I want to learn what I don't know.

Olivia lets those words fill the space of the office. She left her door open when she invited him in. Closing it usually involves some official capacity and confidentiality. It would likely have put the intern on edge had she closed it. Open, a door provides possibilities, choices.

"You're correct, of course. Decades of books and scholarly study won't teach you what you need to experience in the thick of it. You have to be able to walk a crime scene, look a suspect in the eye, taste the copper of blood on the back of your tongue, smell the acrid burn of a discharged weapon. No one can teach that sort of skill. Not esoterically and hypothetically." She pauses, flickers a look to one of Milo's shoulders, to his left hand, to the knot of his burgandy tie before she continues. "What part of forensics intrigues you most? Given what you've studied, of course. What do you think will tickle your mind like nothing else?" Then, she lets the questions spin out, take up space before asking, "Why this?"

Does she mean to overwhelm him with questions? It's not quite firing squad sharp or interrogation rough, but there's definitely a purpose in the sky blue of her eyes as she watches him.

"Of course you may speak directly. In this office? Things flow differently than they do in the rank and file outside that door." She splays her fingers in the direction of the open space beyond with its ringing telephones, its sharp banter and terse conversations. "You have a read on me then, do you?" She's not mocking. But there might just be a faint challenge for him to elaborate further.

Her words were not unexpected, the mention of everything he would have to experience in order to truly know. Did it scare him? Absolutely. Had that stopped him? Obviously not. He couldn't let it stop him from the ambitions that she is now asking about. "Forensics intrigues me because of what it can tell you." He thinks about it a moment, "It has it's own language and I want to learn to speak it...to read it. Like body language or words on a page. The evidence left over at the scene of a crime can tell you just as much as the people interviewed after or the news articles written about their stories." Milo looks to her again as she asks 'why this?', brow furrowing as he thinks again and this time his focus drifts some to the floor as he concentrates.

"It will sound cliche...but to help people. That's why forensics." Milo looks back to the woman again. "My other major is in Psychology...but as I read about the growth in crime happening in this city I realized...I can understand why a person does something or how it affects the person they do it against, but it will just keep happening unless I can start to understand how it happens. I want to learn to stop it from happening. To stop them." The young intern offers another nervous smirk as she mentions his read on her, "My father also said when my brain goes to fast it all comes spilling from my mouth."

It's a relevant question. What Olivia Kincaid does is usually called Criminal Psychology. But there are some aspects that are frequently termed Forensic Psychology. There's just enough overlap for her to consider his words in a unique way. Surely he is aware of the small discrepancies and the large overlap. Milo speaks of what forensics can tell a person. Olivia replies thoughtfully, her quiet tone mellifluous in its own way, "You like puzzles." Crime scenes. "Have you had any experience with live crime scenes yet, Hartwell?" She lifts his portfolio enough to cross one leg over the other knee neatly.

He speaks of cliches. Her glacier blue eyes sparkle just so at the mention of psychology. She is a good listener. He continues through how he thinks this line of work will help people and what he'll get from it, himself. The smirk tells a tale that Olivia follows as much as she did the spoken words. "Your father says many things. Do you agree with him?"

Milo would look to Olivia at her next question and no matter how much he had planned and researched...there was no hiding his youth and inexperience with what is now discussed. "No. I haven't...and I would be insulting you if I tried to lie by saying I wasn't nervous...scared even. About that and other aspects of the internship." He shakes his head then, "Fear isn't going to stop me though. Not from learning or helping people." That part is said with his confidence again. The question about his father then has Milo grinning a bit. "My father is the smartest man I know. While that doesn't always mean accuracy...in those assessments of me, yes I definitely agree with him."

"Then you're in for some excitement, some adrenalin, and the endorphins that will spike when you face your fear. And such puzzles, Hartwell. I have a feeling you'll get along just fine." At that, she does open the file he's brought her in his portfolio. She skims the coursework, the commendations and research he's done, the other activities he's done that are at least tangentially applicable. "Everything looks in order." She looks up and names a few officers with whom he'll be working, shadowing, learning from. She tells him what to expect from his orientation, and she warns him about eating in the cafeteria downstairs. Salmonella, among other things. She tells him where he can find a desk to call his own and names a detective or two who he can ask questions of without too much blow back. "There's usually coffee in the break room, but you have to get there quick before it's gone."

She then looks the young man over again, head to foot and slowly back up again. "You'll need to meet Chief de la Vega. I would suggest doing this the first opportunity you have, though scheduling something with his assistant is the best option. He's a man of few words. I suggest listening and learning. The man is a force of nature. Don't expect much of his time, but take what he'll give you." She describes the Mexican captain in looks and a bit in demeanor, tactfully. Then she closes the portfolio, uncrosses her legs, and rises smoothly to her feet. "Anytime my door is open, you are welcome, Hartwell." She reaches over to her desk and grabs a post-it note and her fountain pen and scrawls out a number. Is that her personal cell? "If you decide you'd like to sit in on an interview, let me know." The post-it is placed atop the papers inside the portfolio and then it is offered back to the dapper, young man. "Now: is there anything further I can do for you?"

Milo is now silent as he absorbs all the information that she is telling him. Then, as the portfolio and the new post it note within (item acquired video game music) are handed to him, back under the arm it goes as he gives a respectful nod of his head to Olivia. "No ma'am. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me and I hope that my time here is as advantageous for you as it is for me."

Olivia offers her hand again to Milo. "It was quite my pleasure. And I have a feeling about you, Hartwell. You feel like serendipity and chaos all tangled up into an exciting sort of ... dapper package." The compliment notwithstanding she smiles, finishes shaking his hand if he indeed took hers again, her scent faintly of shea butter and something fresh and sweet. "But do me one favor," she requests before quite releasing his hand. "Call me Olivia, and I'll gather all the advantages you produce. With prejudice." Is that a playful tone and expression? Something dances behind her striking blue eyes.

Milo grins a bit at the compliment, shaking her hand. "Right. Olivia it is then." Having stood up as well, he turns more towards the door but keeps his attention turned towards Olivia. "I hope you have a great rest of your day." If she had nothing else to say then he would walk out of the office and began the exciting and overwhelming task of learning the office layout.