It's October and I'm in a Halloween kind of mood. Most of the story is already finished. I'll post every few days and be done by the 31st.
This is set sometime during the first season - before the events of the finale.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters. I do not profit in any way.
"No Monkey, I'm not at Uncle Steve's house," Detective Danny Williams told his daughter, "I'm watching the game at home."
Danny shifted on his lumpy couch, trying to juggle the phone, the remote, and a nearly full beer bottle.
"Yes, I know that Uncle Steve had a nicer TV," he managed to get the beer bottle down on the end table without spilling it, "Yes, I know his couch is nicer, too."
On his 19" TV, the Yankees were ahead by only one run with the top of the other team's batting order coming up. It didn't matter how close the game was, these nightly phone calls with Grace would always be more important. Besides the game was pre-recorded because the absurd time zone differences made live sports impossible to watch. Reason 87 on Danny's list of reasons to hate living in Hawaii.
On the phone, Grace had finished telling her father about Mr. Hoppy's latest adventures and returned to what seemed to be her favorite subject these days: Uncle Steve.
"No, I'm not mad at him," Danny reassured her, "It's just that some days Danno reaches the very edge of his crazy tolerance and then Uncle Steve shoves him right over. Today was one of those days."
"No, he didn't blow anything up." It occurred to Danny that Grace heard too much about their cases, "He borrowed a glider from a nice tourist."
That was the best way Danny could thing to spin – The lunatic grabbed a glider and jumped off a cliff when we realized that the gang members we were chasing had gone done, notup, the trail. Even though Chin and Kono were already waiting at the bottom and, in fact, kept said gang members from shooting Steve out of the sky.
"No! I did not borrow a glider, too!" Sometimes Danny wondered if his own precious little girl was trying to kill him (maybe her mother was putting her up to it). "No! It would not be fun!"
Danny was just about to launch into his outdoor safety lecture when his apartment was suddenly rocked by one the loudest non-McGarrett related crashes he had ever heard. The beer bottle danced off the edge of the table, spilling amber liquid on the carpet.
"Gracie, I'll call you back!" Danny hung up the phone and raced towards the source of the crash, which happened to be his bathroom.
He yanked open the door, instinctively flinching back from the water spraying at him. Danny's initial thought was that pipe had exploded. There was plaster drifting through the air and the floor was flooding, but there didn't seem to be much real damage. Then he noticed the red ribbons swirling through the pooling water. As a veteran homicide detective, Danny knew blood when he saw it.
Looking upwards, it appeared to him that some massive weight had been dropped on the floor above him. The ceiling over the tub was bowed downward, cracked and splintered in places. Pieces of white fiberglass could be seen, his upstairs neighbor's bathtub Danny guessed. One of the larger cracks had something else poking through it. It took Danny's horrified brain a few seconds to realize what he was seeing: It was an arm, with parts of the skin scraped away to reveal muscle and bone underneath. The blood was running down the ruined hand to create a small crimson waterfall.
Danny called directly to dispatch as he sprinted out of his own apartment and up the stairs. After confirming with the dispatcher that police, fire, and EMT's were all enroute, he turned his attention to the breathy shrieks that were coming from the apartment directly above his.
"This is the police!" Danny tried the knob but it was locked, "Can you hear me? Can you open the door?"
He got no reply. Stepping back, Danny took a deep breath and kicked the door in. He remembered not to use his bad knee, but pain still radiated up his leg. Danny fleetingly wondered how Steve made it look so damned easy as he limped towards the small, chalky woman hyperventilating on the floor in the living room.
Danny didn't know any of his neighbors well. He had a vague impression that two women lived in this apartment, a mother and her adult daughter. It was the daughter that was kneeling next to. Danny wracked his brain but could not come with her name.
"I'm Detective Williams. I live downstairs. Are you hurt?" he kept his tone calm and reassuring.
"No . . . no . . . my mom . . . she's . . ." the woman was gasping and crying at the same time.
Danny heard sirens growing louder and louder. There were heavy footsteps from the hall. He looked up, expecting a firefighter. Instead, Steve McGarrett appeared in the doorway.
Seeing that Danny had the situation in the living room under control, Steve moved wordlessly passed him and peered into the bathroom. From his position on the floor, Danny couldn't see into the bathroom, but he could see Steve's face. Danny knew right away that the scene was very bad. Steve stepped away from bathroom door, shaking his head sadly at Danny: There was nothing they could do for the woman inside.
Danny turned his attention back to the shuddering form next to him, "Paramedics are on the way. Can you take some deep breaths for me?"
She didn't seem to hear him. Danny was beginning to worry that she would pass out when the apartment was suddenly flooded with firefighters. Two of them took over care of the traumatized woman, leaving Danny free to join Steve.
He didn't really want to know, but felt that he had to ask, "What happened in there? Did the bathtub explode?"
Steve's face was carefully blank but something in his eyes told Danny that what Steve had seen in the bathroom was getting to him, even before he answered, "I think she must have been taking a bath or a shower. The tub from the bathroom in the third floor apartment came down on her," Steve paused, "She did not survive the impact."
"God, what an awful way to go." As they headed back downstairs, Danny couldn't get the image of the arm out of his head. He didn't dare try and imagine what images Steve was seeing.
They found Chin and Kono in Danny's apartment, with an HPD officer and a firefighter. They were all looking into his bathroom, up towards the ceiling. Well at least he wouldn't be the only one with the arm image in his nightmares, Danny thought.
"Hey, what are all of you doing here?" he turned to Steve as a new thought occurred to him, "And how did you beat all the emergency responders to the scene? Do you have cameras hidden in my apartment? What about Kono's apartment? Chin's house?"
"That's absurd. Of course I don't have hidden cameras," Steve grew serious, "Grace called me. She said you were on the phone with her when something really bad happened and you hung up. I called Chin and Kono on my way over."
Danny swore, "I have to call Grace and tell her I'm okay. Can you hang on a second?"
Steve nodded, heading over to join the group by the bathroom.
"How can this happen?" Kono wanted to know, "I'm asking because I have neighbors above me, and they have a bathtub."
Steve allowed himself a small smile. Gallows humor was a common way for cops to deal with the things they saw every day.
Chin just shook his head, "We'll have to wait for a report from the building inspector. In the meantime, you may want to shower at HQ, cuz."
More firefighters appeared at the apartment's front door. "We need everyone to move outside until we can be sure that the rest of the building is stable."
The four members of Five-0 filed out, Danny still on the phone. They gathered near the Camaro as he finished saying goodnight to his daughter.
"Danny staying at your place, Boss?" Kono asked.
"Yes," Steve answered, at the exact same time that Danny snapped, "No!"
"When Kono says, 'Boss,' she's talking to me," Steve explained helpfully. Kono nodded in agreement.
"Who she was asking doesn't matter," Danny informed them, "It's what she was asking that his the issue. I am not staying at Casa McGarrett, a structure which is known for being riddled with bullets and invaded by killer nijias."
"Each of those things happened once," Steve protested, "What are the odds that either would happen again?"
"What are the odds that either would happen once? And in the same year?" Danny's hands were waving now, "This is you we're talking about and that makes the odds extremely high."
"Children, this isn't the time," Chin interrupted softly. They all followed his look and saw the victim's daughter approaching.
"Kilia, we're all very sorry about your mother," Steve held her eyes for a moment so that she could see that he understood what it meant to lose a parent to suddenly violence, "Is there someone here for you?"
"I have a cousin on her way over. I'll stay with her family." Tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill over.
Danny stopped wondering why Steve knew his neighbor's name when he didn't and stepped forward to offer what comfort he could, "Would you like to sit in my car while you wait? Kono will find you some Kleenex and bottle of water."
Their rookie headed off to do just that.
Kilia shook her head, "All I want you to do is take this!" She shoved the ceramic cat she had been clutching at Danny, who instinctively took it from her, "It killed my mother!" The tears began to fall quickly now.
The three men exchanged mystified looks.
Steve gently placed his hands on her shoulders, "Kilia, your mother had an accident with a bathtub."
"But the statue caused it," Kilia seemed to compose herself a little before continuing, "Mom and her sister Halia, they always wanted to see Egypt, ever since they were little girls. Four months ago, they finally went. After they saw the pyramids, they bought some stuff at the gift shop. When they got back to the hotel, Aunt Halia found the statue of Bastet in one of her bags. She didn't buy it so the clerk must have put it in by accident. She decided to keep it." More tears interrupted the story.
Chin quietly signaled to a nearby HPD officer, "Can you find out when her cousin will be here to take her home."
"Does your Aunt live here in Hawaii, too?" Danny asked. It seemed to settle her a little when she talked.
"No, she moved to San Diago years ago," Kono returned with a wad of tissues for her. Kilia accepted them with a grateful smile. "But just a few weeks after she got home from Egypt, she died."
"What happened?" Steve prompted when the distraught woman fell silent.
"It was a escalator accident!" Kilia sniffed.
Danny desperately wanted to ask how one could have a fatal escalator accident but couldn't think of any tactful way to ask. He resolved to look up the incident later.
Kilia was continuing her story, "We all went to the mainland for the funeral. Mom saw the statue and asked Halia's kids if she could have it. She said it was a memory of their trip. The girls gave it to her."
Another young Hawaiian woman hurried over, "Kilia! I'm so sorry." The cousins hugged, "Let me take you home now."
Kilia turned back to Danny, "After Mom brought that statue home, bad things started to happen. She got food poisoning, two days ago her car lost its breaks, and now this. That statue is cursed! I'm so sorry but you're Five-0 – you'll know what to do with it." She allowed her cousin to lead her away.
The four members of Five-0 were left in awkward silence.
"Well, that happened." Danny headed towards his apartment building, looking back over his shoulder at his friends, "Thank you all for coming so quickly. I'll see you at work tomorrow."
Still looking at his friends, Danny actually walked into the firefighter who had stepped forward to block the building's entrance, "Sir, you can't go in there. The building is off limits pending an inspection."
"I can't –" Danny forced himself to be reasonable. These people were doing their jobs to keep him safe. He respected that, "Of course, I'll just a few of my things."
The man, who in all his firefighting gear was almost twice Danny's size, didn't budge, "I'm sorry but you can't enter your apartment at all. The ceiling could come down."
Danny was aware of Steve stepping up beside him. This was one of the rare times when having an insane Navy SEAL for a partner was worth it. Danny waited, a little bit gleefully, for McGarrett to spout some nonsense about immunity and combine it with a death glare to gain them access to his apartment.
Steve, however, chose this occasion to masquerade as a reasonable human being, "Pardon Detective Williams. He's a bit shaken up by the death of his neighbor and the loss of his home. I'm his partner and he can stay at my place while you do your job," Steve took Danny's elbow and pulled him away from the door, "We'll be going now."
Danny reluctantly followed Steve back to their vehicles, "What am I supposed to do about my clothes?" he demanded, looking down at the sweatpants, t-shirt, and running shoes he had thrown on to watch the game, "What am I supposed to wear to work tomorrow?"
Steve waved the question away as if it were of no importance, "You're welcome to borrow something. I have plenty of clothes."
"What? You don't understand the problem with that suggestion, do you?" Danny made a series of hand gestures between the two of them, "I would have a better chance of wearing Kono's clothes."
"I think I have some things in the car," Kono offered, coming up beside him, "You want me to check now?"
"No," Danny stomped towards the Camaro, "I will sleep at Steve's tonight and make do with what I'm wearing for a day or two."
Chin shook his head regretfully, "I was talking to some of the firefighters. They estimate it might be a week or longer until your apartment's been cleared. They're worried that when the body is removed, it will cause the ceiling over your bathroom to completely cave in."
"If they don't just declare the entire place an unsafe rat trap and condemn it," Steve added helpfully.
Danny closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep calming breaths. "Fine," he ground out, "tomorrow I will need to take a personal day to do some shopping. Right now, I would like to leave, but I will need a ride since my keys are in my apartment."
Steve reached into one of the many pockets on his cargo pants, producing Danny's wallet, badge, and car key, "I grabbed these for you on the way out."
"Thank you," Danny's smile was sincere. It was nice having people who looked out for you.
As Steve was climbing into his truck, he looked back over his shoulder, "I didn't have a chance to get your gun. You can borrow one or two of my spares."
He slammed to cab door before Danny could respond.
Yes, Danny thought, pulling out onto the street behind Steve, this is my life.