Love Has No Words
By Dimgwrthien
Disclaimer: I do not own anything pertaining to CSI:NY or affiliates.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
- Voltaire
Mac had already taken a few pictures of the body before Stella arrived on the scene. She put down her kit, looked around, and gave Mac the same response he had when he entered the scene. "What just happened?"
A pretty girl lay in the center of the room, short red hair ragged as though torn. Though her eyes were closed and she lay very still, Mac had felt a pulse on her. A hole went through her chest, and another through her arm, from a gunshot. Several of the on-site doctors were trying to stop her bleeding and put her onto the stretcher to take her out. No other traces of blood were on the carpet, as though the bullets never hit her.
"This isn't right," Stella said, glancing at the girl as the doctors wheeled her out. "Isn't there usually a dead body?"
"There is," Mac said. He climbed on top of the bed behind where the girl had been, reaching up onto the shelf above. "Here."
Stella joined him. This time it was a body with blonde hair. His blue eyes remained open, frozen in place.
"Who would put him up here?" Stella asked, looking at the bite marks around his arms and the stab wound. She guessed it was around his heart.
"Someone who wouldn't want the girl to see him?" Mac guessed, looking at Stella. She remained staring at the boy. He was probably around twenty, like the girl.
"But who shot the girl, then?"
Mac looked over the shelf, seeing no blood but the amount on the victim's clothes. When he couldn't see anything, he got off the bed, looking at the sheets for anything else. Nothing.
"I'll get the UV light," she said. "Any identification of either vic?"
"Joan Micole and Damien Gibbs. They apparently went to school together for about six years. Otherwise, no real connection between them."
Stella furrowed his brow as Mac took a final picture of Damien, this time focusing on one of the bite wounds on his shoulder. It seemed blurred, as though the person had been dragged by the mouth for a moment.
"I'm assuming there were no witnesses?" Stella asked.
Mac gave her a tight smile. "Don't assume so fast," he said. "When we got here, a little girl was standing in the room. Joan's little sister, apparently. Adeline. Age sixteen."
"Has anyone questioned her?"
"Not yet," Mac said. "We're still trying to find someone who can."
Stella raised an eyebrow.
"She's a mute," Mac answered. "She can't write, either."
"Well, that sounds like fun," Stella answered sarcastically. "Where is she now?"
Mac pointed to one of the walls. Stella peered around the doorframe in the direction Mac pointed, seeing the girl on the bed in the next room. She looked at Stella, unsmiling, her dark brown hair covering most of her face. Stella joined the girl, sitting next to her on the bed.
"Adeline, right?"
The girl nodded.
"Did you see Damien and your sister as they were killed?"
The girl looked away, but nodded.
"Do you know who killed them?"
The girl looked at Stella, grey eyes unblinking. Finally, she nodded. Stella felt this was too easy.
"Do you want to tell me?"
Adeline shrugged.
Why wouldn't you want to tell me? It's your sister! Doesn't justice mean anything to you?
Stella patted the girl's arm. "We're going to have to question you in a little while, alright?"
Adeline gave her another indifferent shrug.
Returning to Mac, Stella said, "I think our only witness had some part in it, if she's so unwilling to speak."
By the end of the day, Mac could only stand in the corner of the room, staring down the room. The bodies had been removed hours before, the DNA samples sent in, the room searched, the girl questioned as best as possible.
Joan was still hours from waking.
Stella entered the room quietly, watching Mac as he watched the room. She tied her hair back, then put on her gloves. Mac still didn't seem to notice her.
"No blood in the room, other than what's on their bodies. No traces from the victim. No gun powder residue." Mac sighed and rubbed at his forehead. "No new information from the girl."
"Autopsy?" Stella asked, surprised that Mac had noticed her.
"Found the bullet. Tracing back the gun. So far, it sounds as though it's one from a shop, of all places." He gave Stella a very grim look. "This may be a closed case for a while."
Stella glanced at the scene once more, then to Mac. He looked exhausted, the shadows under his eyes highlighted. His head was even started to bob to his chest if he stared for too long, and his eyes were half-lidded. Stella could only guess how long he had been standing there or worked on the pileup of cases the group seemed to have been getting that entire week.
"They weren't killed inside the building," Stella muttered, looking at the areas that were marked off for the bodies. "A gun from a shop. Is the shop close?"
"It's in New Jersey," Mac sighed. "I had to call them to find out which shop."
Stella frowned. "Parents are dead, older sister taking care of the younger one…. An unrelated boy comes in. Traces of vaginal damage in the older sister. Older sister is left alive. The knife is gone. Matches to most pocket knives. Small pocket knives." Bending down, Stella looked at the carpet closely. "Fibers are wet," she noticed. "Not even water can wash away blood. There was never any blood here. What else wet could have come here?"
Mac thought for a moment, then left the room. Stella continued to stare at the carpet, trying to form an idea. When Mac returned, he was holding a large trash bag with red stains on the inside, along with a skateboard that had dark black wheels, showing that it had been wet sometime before.
"The blood trace on the bag was pig's blood, so no one figured it was related to the case. A butcher shares the dumpster with the rest of the street."
Stella opened the bag a little to look. "If there's enough blood from the pig, then what are the chances of picking up human blood?"
Mac nodded slowly. "There are no dental records for the bite marks because they were too twisted to see. Saliva would have gotten onto the skin and the bag if they were killed in the bag, but the blood…" Mac paused, tearing half the bag to show Stella something. "The blood wouldn't cover it, would it?"
Stella grinned and swabbed at the bag where a clear liquid covered the blood. "Then you send it in to DNA and find your killer."
Adeline sat at the table before the two CSIs. Her lawyer, who served as a slow translator, watched Mac and Stella closely.
"You walked in on Damien raping your sister in the yard," Stella said, staring the girl down. Adeline made no move. "Your sister had invited him in earlier, so you knew he was there. You just didn't expect to find them on top of one another."
The girl swallowed harder, staring at the table now.
"The gun had been brought in from off the street," Mac continued. "There's a single fingerprint in the barrel, and it's yours. Someone in your family got it illegally from New Jersey. You found it, shot your sister by mistake, and finally stabbed Damien with a pocket knife."
"You didn't want to leave them in the garden." Stella raised her eyebrows. "You managed to pack up the two in the garbage bags from the house and bring them in on your skateboard. You left your sister there."
"But you hid Damien from her," Mac told her, leaning forward. "You knew your sister was near death, but letting her see him dead would give her a heart attack. So you managed to push him onto the shelf. He's a small boy, and you're not much smaller than him."
"The only problem with it," Stella said, "is that we can't find that knife. Care to confess to any of it?"
Adeline didn't make a move to speak in sign language. Instead, she opened her mouth wide, pointing into her throat.
The lawyer didn't even need to translate it, but he did. "She swallowed the knife."
Stella shivered slightly, trying to imagine swallowing a pocket knife, no matter how small. "We'll need to take you in for x-rays, Adeline. After that, I think you'll be able to see inside the jail."
Adeline reached forward for the folder in front of Mac. Mac made a move to stop her, but didn't when he saw that she had taken the pen, too. She wrote, in broken letters and jumbled English
I did it because I cared for Joan.
As Mac and Stella exited the room, the written-on file in Mac's bag, Stella said, "Killing because you care. I haven't heard that excuse in a while."
Mac shook his head. "Think about it. Her sister was being raped, so she killed the rapist. When she knew her sister would die, she saved her from having to see someone dead."
"Why not just call the police to save her?"
"She's mute, of course," Mac answered shortly. "All she was trying to do was protect someone she loved."
Stella raised her eyebrows but said nothing. Instead, she just patted Mac's shoulder and nodded, turning to leave.
Mac caught her hand and held it tightly.