Re: The Poor Thing/The Detective
Tommy didn't hold any polarizing ideas about women in the workplace, but he had an inherited distrust of the police. It was something well-nourished since the age of four when they started disrupting his home life for one reason or another. Back then, the police were always dragging dad out by the scruff of his neck to cool off after the man had bloodied up mom or one of the kids. Sometimes they even would drag dad back in after midnight, drunk as a skunk and no good on his own feet. Tommy had never met a detective in his life, the lady kind of not, but he had long ago inured himself to the total uselessness of lawmen. Never holding vigil when it counted, but always sniffing around for glory in the afterglow. It'd not like they were saints or agents of beneficence, half of them were bastards and criminals themselves. He had his reasons for being leery now, a reason to keep his guard up.
Tommy straightened up a little after Detective Amoux announced herself. He wasn't about to shrink under her watchful eyes, there wasn't enough of him to spare for that really. If life decided to chip away at Tommy any more than it already had, he'd soon end up being more ghost than boy. He'd been carved down, whittled to his last veins, but he did not radiate weakness. There was a strategic, hungry energy to him, like an alley cat who had spotted the butcher's wares in a shop front window, and now if only he could get from A to B.
It was an effect of getting looked at so crookedly for so long in his life, most often for being somewhere that he didn't belong(like now), that Tommy had lost the ability to feel real sorry about it. He'd apologized to her, but he wasn't going to get sheepish about it. Wasn't like she was some first class Queen of Sheba, was she? But all right, being a lady might've accounted for some lingering politeness now because he did give his name. "Tommy McEvoy." There was defiant, slightly angry, steel to his jaw. He didn't have anything to hide, but he knew it must look suspicious that he'd been wandering through cars.
"I might've. What's it worth to ya?" Levity might not have been appropriate, but Tommy didn't owe anything to those who'd gone missing.