Brightest Crayon

Brightest Crayon

By OughtaKnowBetter

Disclaimer: if you haven't figured it out by now, don't expect me to sympathize

A/N: This work contains several original characters with disabilities. No doubt some readers will find the portrayals politically incorrect as well as insensitive. That was not the intent. The goal was to portray them as people first, people with both good and bad qualities, just like the rest of us whose short-comings may be less obvious. It will be up to you to decide how successful I was in the attempt, and whether or not I told a good story...

Run!

Stumble, catch the railing, haul upward, keep on running.

Flee.

xxxxxxx

Catch the breath. Breathe again, try to stay quiet. Try to hide.

Little whimpers leaking out of the mouth like helpless children torn away from Mother.

Not quiet enough.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Run again. No use to hide. Doesn't work. Too stupid to hide. Too stupid to find a hidey hole. That's what everyone says. That's what everyone tells me. That's what Mother tells me. Not smart, like

him.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Too stupid to live.

David Sinclair straightened himself up, regret evident in the set of his shoulders. "Damn shame," he told the police detective that had called him in. "The kid looks pretty young, mid-twenties or so. Damn shame," he repeated, "but I'm thinking there's nothing here for the FBI. I'll release the case pending the coroner's report. That good enough for you?"

There was nothing to indicate that a crime had taken place—at least, nothing illegal. What was criminal was that the accident had occurred in the first place. No one ought to trip down a long flight of stairs and break his neck as this young man had done. It was a back staircase, dusty around the edges, and the stairs were made of solid concrete with no forgiveness for a momentary clumsiness. A smear of blood graced the fifth step up where the victim's mouth had come in contact with it, then a larger dribbling onto the equally gray landing where the victim lay sprawled in a position not achievable by the living. Forensics was already snapping pictures , and the M.E. had vacated the scene after pronouncing, directing the body to be removed for a routine autopsy to be scheduled whenever he got around to it in between all the criminal homicides that took priority. It was crowded on the landing, so David remained on the next flight heading down, the LAPD police detective beside him.

Calling in the FBI was regulation for a place like this, an industrial chemicals research facility with ties to the military. If it hadn't been for those ties, David reflected, then he'd be at home getting ready to turn in for the night and this would have been all LAPD's headache. He sighed, glad that he'd restrained his initial impulse to notify his boss. FBI regs said that he should have—technically, he was out on a case—but this was just procedure and nothing worth bugging an exhausted and over-worked Don Eppes. There wasn't anything more here than a tragic accident. Notifying Special Agent Eppes could wait until morning. A kid, part of the cleaning crew that worked late into the night, had tripped over his own feet and taken a header that had ended up breaking his neck. David was no doctor, but it wouldn't surprise him to see the coroner's report say that death was all but instantaneous.

Still, regs were regs. He could release the scene to LAPD, but closing the 'case' would wait until he'd seen the autopsy report and could give it the stamp of approval. As overworked as the M.E.'s department was, that could be another week. David mentally shrugged; what was one more manila file folder on his own desk?

David eyeballed the kid's name tag: Reuben Magenbrot. The face on the victim matched the face on the bar-coded identification badge, and David cringed. To add insult to injury, it was clear that the victim had Down's Syndrome. The heavy eyelids and rounded features were a complete giveaway, and he wondered morbidly if the genetic disorder had given poor Reuben Magenbrot the clumsiness that had resulted in his death. It seemed unfair, somehow, that Life had conspired to throw so much against an innocent man. He turned to the LAPD detective. "Anybody notify his family?"

The detective shrugged noncommittally, and David looked at the man's own badge: Raymond Votta.

Votta sighed. "Lives at a boarding house, some place for guys with a screw loose. We're not finding any family, just a caretaker. I've sent a uni to take care of it."

Right. Send a uniformed patrol man, probably nothing more than a kid himself, to notify some underpaid worker at a state sponsored facility in the community that he had one less problem to deal with, at least until the state could fill the bed with another poor soul. There are times when this job really sucks, you know that, Sinclair?

Something white caught David's eye, shimmering dully in the overhead light that grudgingly illuminated the stairwell. He allowed his focus to shift onto the white; looking at the dead face made him uncomfortable.

Then he grew interested. "What's that?"

"What's what?"

"This." David pulled on a pair of gloves to pluck the white object from the victim's hand. It was a business card. David turned it over to read the name, and sucked in his breath.

"Do you mind? Gotta slab the body." One of the attendants pushed David out of his path, eager to get the job over and done with so that he could return to his real avocation of writing the Great American Novel on his coffee breaks.

Votta tried to peek at the name that had David so worked up. "That mean something to you? That guy something special? It's for damn sure that this card doesn't belong to our vic here."

"Yeah, this name means something to me." It meant a long, caffeine-laden night. It meant waking up his boss, Don Eppes. It meant harassing the M.E. into doing a fast autopsy at one AM Wednesday morning.

It meant pulling Professor Charles Eppes into an interrogation to find out just why his business card was in the hand of a dead man in a complex filled with military secrets.

To say that he felt like crap was giving manure too much credit.

Don Eppes, despite the gravity of the situation, would have cheerfully gone straight back home and sought out his pillow for comfort. Sleep had been on the docket, and he had intended to avail himself of the necessity—not even a pleasure, right now, just an overwhelming need to remove the lactic acid from his body immediately—for a minimum of twenty-four hours, which was how long everyone had estimated that the D.A.'s office would need to process the various charges and set up the initial court hearings for the now closed case. Going undercover had been a risky, gutsy move that had paid off by bringing in one of the more notorious hit men in the country. The man had been brought in to do a job, and now he would never leave the state unless some idiot reduced his sentence for good behavior. Of course, if that happened, there were plenty of other states in the nation who would be willing, even eager, to request extradition so that the man could then begin to serve time for crimes committed in that particular town.

Getting close to the man had been tough, and Don's nerves had been on edge for the entire week that he was under. Three times he'd thought that his cover had been blown, and the third time he had been looking at the wrong end of a gun barrel when Colby had kicked in the door just before the man went to pull the trigger. The only reason he was alive today—and he used the term 'alive' guardedly, considering his present inability to reason through lack of sleep—was the competence of his team. There was already a celebratory dinner, Don's treat, planned at the Le Cote de Raison D'Etre downtown, date to be determined after Don woke up.

Well, he was awake, and he wasn't in the mood to set up dinner, even if the restaurant was willing to accept reservations phoned in at something shy of four AM. He inhaled another large swallow of coffee, praying that the caffeine would serve as a sleep substitute for the next several hours. Don decided that standing would be the best position to maintain for this briefing. Sitting down behind his desk might result in a series of over-loud snores.

He glanced automatically at his watch. "We have to hold off on talking to Charlie," he announced, then realized that he'd already told his team that Charlie was flying back from a conference on the East coast on a red eye. His brother would be arriving around eight in the morning, and their father had already been hired as the driver to pick him up and deliver him straight to CalSci with a ten o'clock class to teach. Charlie hadn't been happy about the timing, but hadn't been able to get an earlier flight. Don remembered listening to Charlie grouch over the airline schedules, and then had put it out of his mind to work on his case. That had taken up all of Don's attention.

Until now. Don stifled a yawn, and tried to screw his attention to the task at hand. "Run it down for me," he requested, hoping that this time he'd actually be able to comprehend what he was being told.

David refrained from any comments that might get him fired. "Lavozzi Industries," he began. "It's a chemical research firm, specializing in inorganic chemicals with an eye toward sterilization procedures. They provide new ways for manufacturing companies to clean old equipment so that the equipment can be reused. Apparently there's a big market in designing cleaning solutions that do the job and can either be reclaimed or safely disposed of in an environmentally friendly fashion. This research," he added, for Don's benefit, "is also of use to the military. Some of the cleaning solutions are being tested on equipment being used in Iraq, and may help to keep the engines from getting clogged by the fine dust flying through the air. One of the major causes of equipment failure in that part of the world is that small particles of dirt are getting into the moving parts of various engines, causing them to seize. The armed forces are very interested in anything that will help their equipment to continue to function until the expected expiration date."

"So that's the military connection," Megan murmured. At four in the morning she too was sleepy, and she hadn't been wired tighter than tympani for the last few days. Don still found it within himself to empathize. "Anything to suggest that this wasn't an accident, plain and simple? Just because we found Charlie's business card there doesn't mean that a crime was committed. Accidents happen in research facilities, even ones with governmental contracts."

"Good point." Don wished that it had been made before waking him up two hours earlier. "What does the autopsy say?"

"Not in yet—wait, here it is." Colby pressed the appropriate buttons on his keyboard to allow the report to pop up on the screen. "Whoa. Dr. Ault sounds pissed."

"Colby, it's a report. It's factual."

"Yeah? Trust me on this: he's using strict medical-ese. He does that when he's annoyed over being rushed. I can barely understand what's he's talking about. I don't think any of these words have fewer than six syllables."

"Hit the conclusion, Colby. Does he think this was an accident or not?" If it was, Don was heading straight back to bed, no matter what.

Colby sucked in his breath. Don felt his stomach clench. Adrenalin started to wake him up once again.

"'Subject had apparently engaged in heavy physical activity immediately prior to death'," Colby read out loud. "He goes on to describe a bunch of medical mumbo-jumbo to support his conclusion, then fixes the time of death at ten-twelve PM, give or take an hour."

"So we have a two hour window," Don mused, feeling his mind clear. "What kind of physical activity? Lifting some furniture? Or running for his life?"

"I can narrow that timeline down," David offered. "The night watch called 911 at ten fifty-eight."

"That's good. How about the other end? What time did the victim arrive at the facility?"

David consulted his notes. "No help there, Don. Magenbrot arrived at six fifty nine, just before seven o'clock, with the rest of the crew."

"Last person to see him alive?"

"Don't know yet." David glanced over his notes. "It's a cleaning team from an outfit called Make a Better Day. Chances of getting hold of someone from there before eight is slim."

"Do it, eight o'clock sharp," Don ordered. "The sooner we clear this up, the sooner we can all—" he checked himself. There were three men, all dressed in business formal, all appearing entirely too awake for this hour of the morning. Don didn't recognize any of them, and from the looks on the faces of his team, neither did anyone else. More adrenalin pumped in, threatening to help the coffee burn an ulcer into his gut. There weren't many people who could walk through Headquarters unchallenged, but these were three of them.

Worse, they stopped in front of the room where Don was holding his four AM briefing.

They wasted no time. "Special Agent Don Eppes?" one inquired briskly, his tone not at all in keeping with the hour.

"Right here. And you are—?"

"Drug Enforcement Agency." The man flashed his credentials. "I'm John Bausch, senior investigator. Jerry Gratofsky. Steve Lomb. I understand you got called in for the Lavozzi murder. This is actually our case, so we'll take the evidence off of your hands. What have you got?"

"Hold on here. What do you mean, what have we got? This is FBI jurisdiction," Don protested, all of his instincts aroused. "What have you got?"

"Agent Eppes, we've been working this case for the last two months," Bausch said, trying not to be impatient. "We're not about to give it to you now, just because our primary lead got murdered. This is still our case."

"Wait a minute; back up." Don really really wished that he was more awake. It seemed as though he was going to need a lot more brainpower to get through this than he had anticipated. "Chief suspect? What are you talking about? And how did you find out about this so fast, to come waltzing in here at four o'clock in the morning?"

"Agent Eppes, this is our—"

"Gentlemen." Megan broke in with a knife-edged smile. She gestured at the remaining empty chairs at the other end of the room. "Please, take a seat. It appears that we have a great deal to discuss."