"This is a pretty fresh scene Danny" Aiden Burn wrinkled her nose as she stared down at the bloody corpse. The victim lay on his back in the snow, which in some places was knee deep. His blood was a shock of red over the freshly fallen snow and was already beginning to freeze as a new wave of snow fell from the darkened sky.
"The uniform who answered the call was only a couple minutes away and the other guy was right behind him, they got in here within minutes. Plus the original call was for shots fired" Danny Messer, his blonde hair mostly hidden under a black woollen cap coughed into his sleeve.
It was a rough, harsh sounded cough and went on for long enough that Aiden shot him a doubtful look and crossed her arms, popping a hip to regard him as he straightened up. "What!" he half snapped at her.
"You want your lung back from where you heaved it up on the floor?" she asked. "How sick are because I just got over the flu and I don't even know what germs mutate into inside of you so you better not be contagious Danny 'cos I swear to Buddha -"
"Your concern is touching Aiden, really it is" Danny half smiled and Aiden realised how pale he was.
"Seriously, are you okay?" she stepped towards him, noticing suddenly quite how blue his eyes where. 'Whoah, where did THAT come from?' she asked herself, filing it away as Danny shrugged.
" Its just a bug, its been goin around, Flack had it and I think I might have accidentally finished his beer the other night so…" he trailed off.
Aiden pulled her glove off and pressed her hand to his forehead, making him blink and flinch back. "Relax Mr anti social, I just want to see if you have a fever" she told him, putting her hand back in place. "Okay, you 're running kinda hot Danny, maybe you should go home" she said pulling her hand back.
" I'm fine Aid, I swear to God I'm okay! Your actual concern is appreciated but unnecessary" He grinned that dazzling grin of his at her and she smiled back.
Don Flack strode over to the crime scene, cell phone in hand. His long legs carried him quickly over the snow, which only reached up to mid shin on him. In unison. the Five feet Eight inch tall Danny and the five foot six inch Aiden looked down at their soaked and freezing legs, damp up to knee level, and glared at the six feet two Flack whose pants seemed to be made for skiing. "Bastard" they muttered to one another under their breath.
"So Mac's car wouldn't start because of the cold but he's on his way now, he said he's about 30 minutes away and to just get started. Jeez, aren't you guys cold?" he asked them, eyeing the black dress pants that Aiden wore and the beige suit that Danny had on.
"Why, is it cold?" Danny asked sarcastically, making Aiden laugh and Flack smile grimly.
"Whatever Messer, you guys just do your stuff before the snow covers it all" He shot back ,only half serious, turning on his heel to head back towards the waiting cars. There must have been a hidden patch of ice under the snow because one of his feet slid out from under him as a sudden breeze caught the back of his jacket and raised it, so that as he fell he landed in the snow, soaking the back of his shirt.
Aiden whooped and laughed and Danny bent almost double clutching his stomach as he laughed out loud. Flack climbed awkwardly to his feet.
"Hey man you okay? You cold!" Danny yelled.
Flack shot him a look then chuckled, knowing he was beaten. " you'll get yours Messer, you just wait!2 he called back, heading, carefully now, back toward the cars.
15 minutes later Aiden and Danny had found something interesting. They had seen the footprints leading to the body form the road when they arrived at the scene; three sets, one clearly the victims, two presumably belonging to his killer. But there had been no prints leading away from the body. They had scouted around and finally foun the foot prints in the snow. Three feet away from the body. " So what, a basketball player killed our vic?" Aiden asked as she mixed the prill sulfur to take impressions of the footprints.
Danny smirked and tipped his head to the side like a bird to get a better look at the prints. "No…" he said, Stepping around, over them. He looked at the body three feet away, then at the footprints, then in the direction the footprints headed, down the small incline and along the small path that ran by the railing, which in turn ran by the river. The river was moving quickly today, snow barely collecting at the banks 15 feet below the banks. " We know that two more people where here…what if they helped one another, like if one gave his buddy a boost to get over here then the other one jumped and his friend caught him. That way the prints start over here and we get all confused about 'em. Or they hope we do but we're just that good." He mused "Aiden, what's wrong with these prints?" He asked suddenly, standing up straight. He looked at his own footprints.
"How do you mean?" Aiden replied, dropping more sulfur pellets into the small propane heated pot.
"I…I don't know" he told her "something's wrong with 'em but I cant…I cant put my finger on it" he continued, sounding vaguely agonized. He looked up at the heavy clouds, blinking as snowflakes fell into his eyes.
"What?" Aiden looked up at him.
" Shit, I don't know, just…something." again he looked in the direction the footprints headed, curving away around the low hill. "I'm gonna see if these lead anywhere interesting" He picked up the camera from his pack, slinging the strap around his neck.
"Be careful" Aiden called after him, her attention on the pot in front of her.
As she sprayed paint into one of the footprints she paused to look at it, trying to see what had disturbed Danny so much. Whatever it was it was lost on her and she shrugged, squeezing down on the top of the can and letting the red paint fill the shoe print.
" Wow, good prints!" Mac Taylors voice cut through Aidens attention as she used tweezers to pluck a piece of…something from within one of the prints. She jumped, freezing her arm in case she damaged the evidence. Mac crouched beside her, holding out a small glass vial for her to deposit the item which Aiden could only call "Gooey" Mac provided the word.
"That sounds like a Bonasera original" Aiden turned to grin at her boss.
Mac smiled and nodded as he pushed the lid onto the vial and held it up to examine it in the light. " Looks like…solid flem" he said, grimacing
"Oh. Nice" Aiden matched his grimace, shooting a look at the end of her tweezers.
" So what do we have?" Mac nodded in the direction of the corpse.
"White male, looks about twenty to twenty five years old, two gunshot wounds to the chest, looks pretty much point blank. The call came in just under an hour ago, somebody driving by reported hearing gunshots, two uniforms responded in a matter of minutes because they where nearby anyway, the first car was sitting out the last half hour of their shift, the second car just got lucky" Aiden filled him in as he walked down the line of prints.
"Three perps" he stated
"No the third print is Danny, he went to see where they lead" Aiden corrected him.
"When?"
"About" she checked her watch "ten minutes ago. This embankment runs pretty far, I think he was thinking get away car"
"What's down there?" Mac asked
"A boat house" Flack told them as he walked over "Uniforms got to rustle kids out of there every month or so, they go in there to drink. There's an old jetty too, it's pretty old. Every now and then some drunken pubescent wanders out onto the thing and, well, becomes and ex drunken pubescent" Flack visibly shuddered.
"Cold, Flack?" Aiden asked innocently.
"Funny. Hey where's Stella?" he asked, changing the subject smoothly.
"Day off" Aiden replied, grinning at him "She told me she was gonna lie in until noon and that we where only allowed to call her if somebody died!"
Mac frowned. "Aiden, what's wrong with these shoe prints?" he called.
"Danny asked me that exact same question!" Aiden snapped, marching over to stand beside Mac. "I'm sorry, I don't see it" she confessed.
"These are Danny's right?" He pointed to Danny's prints, different from the others in that his where slightly smaller, and not made by a boot unlike those of the suspects.
"He's got little feet" Flack chuckled
"And these are the suspects'…this is…not right" Mac frowned deeper, if that was possible.
"What!" Aiden snapped.
"The snow's been falling constantly since you arrived right? And we already know this is a fresh scene…there's more snow starting to fill in the suspects prints than there is Danny's…but not all that much more…I don't think you guys where much more than a couple minutes behind the killers" he explained. "Flack, how wide is our containment zone for this scene?" The older man asked. "Does it go as far as the boat house?
"Uh, yeah, yeah cos this is all enclosed around here, there's a fence somewhere, the gate in was wrecked years ago but weirdly, the owner's good about keeping his fence maintained. Least that's what the uniforms told me. Why?"
"I saw the guys on the gate, how long have they been here?" Mac asked, his voice holding an edge that made Aiden step back from him, one hand half reaching for her gun on her hip.
Flack picked up on it too and reached for his radio as he answered "I know for a fact that one of those cars has been here the whole time because he and the other car arrived here at the same time and Eddie, on the gate, he stayed back to guard the gate, he's the one that knows about the fence" he replied "you thinking we might have trapped our killers?" he said to Mac as he keyed his radio "Eddie, this is Don, I'm here at the scene, listen buddy, you see anybody leave in the time since you arrived?" he spoke into the mike.
Aiden couldn't make out the reply but Flack cursed out loud "No body left, no one on car no one on foot" he informed them. He looked in the direction Danny had gone what suddenly seemed like an eternity ago "That boat house has access to the road, if they've walked there to meet a car and we've trapped them in…Danny…" he let the thought finish itself.
Mac had his cell phone pressed to his ear, his face grim as he paced tapped his free hand against his thigh impatiently. "Come on Danny" he muttered "pick up the phone"
"He may just have it on silent, you know how he is at a scene" Aiden stated even as Flack waved to a group of uniforms who started down the embankment toward them.
"He sets it to vibrate, he'd be able to feel this" Mac told her, vocalising what she already knew.
As one the CSI's and police headed after Danny, hands on their guns. Mac was still trying to reach the young CSI on his cell, but the look on his face did not inspire much hope in Aiden.
Ten minutes previously Danny had stopped to photograph a print and looked back the way he came, blinking in surprise when he realised he had gone further than he had thought. He had walked around the gentle curve of the embankment far enough that he couldn't see Aiden and the crime scene anymore. His eyes where drawn back to the shoe prints and he paused. Danny placed one hand on his gun, tapping his fingers against it for a second. The small movement seemed to reassure him and he set off again, totally engrossed in the task. He rounded another gentle curve and the ground beneath the snow changed under his shoes. He stopped and looked up, pushing his glasses further up his nose as he blinked at the old boat house.
Once again he looked back the way he had come. He shrugged inside his coat, wanting to button it but not willing to risk cutting off his own access to his gun. Looking at the footprints he had figured out why they had bothered him, and while he didn't have all the information about how enclosed the scene was, he had put two and two together. He made for the boathouse, pushing his coat back like a gunfighter, his hand hovering over his gun. The snow was more than thick enough to mute his steps as he carefully, quietly approached the old wooden building. He reached the wall, listening intently. At first all he could hear was the rushing water over the wall, but as he concentrated, he thought he could make out voices. He took a step closer to the door, cocking his head. He could definitely hear voices within the boathouse. Almost silently he drew his gun, holding it in a double grip in front of him. He edged along the wall, listening to the exchange as it grew clearer.
"When can we get out of here? I'm freezin' my ass off"
"Look, the cops where quicker to respond than we thought they would be, we just gotta wait around until they leave."
"Hey, you guys did good, just relax, trust me okay?" a third voice put in. Danny paused and worked out in his head that this guy must have been the guy who dropped them off at the embankment to do the killing. Now here he was to pick them up again. The area got enough car traffic that it would have seemed like the killers just vanished.
"Look you guys did the thing with your shoe prints right?" the third voice asked.
"Yeah"
"Well that'll confuse 'em, trust me!" The guy reassured his companions.
Danny resisted the urge to laugh out loud as he got nearer to the door, his eyes focused entirely on the gap where one of the doors hadn't closed all the way. He stepped away from the wall, ready to enter the boat house when he heard something that made him stop;
"Where the hell did Tino get to already? I mean how long does it take a guy to piss in the snow!"
Danny froze, some ancient instinct telling him there was some one behind him, some one big. The cold hard metal of a gun barrel touched the back of his neck and Danny cursed his own reckless stupidity, raising his hands without needing to be told. The gunman, presumably Tino reached forward and plucked Danny's weapon from his hands, pushing forward with the gun at Danny's neck to make the CSI step forward. Danny entered the gloom of the boathouse, his eyes automatically scanning the room, an instinctive reaction bred from a combination of years as a CSI and growing up in Tanglewood. He looked for anything he could use, be it a weapon or a way to escape. The room did not yield many prospects for either, unless he counted the shiny new Jeep parked within, but somehow Danny suspected he would not gain access to the Jeep all that easily.
Tino shoved him harder than was necessary and Danny had to stagger to keep form falling on his face.
"What the hell is this!" a high panicked voice asked.
Danny thought it was a stupid question since it was pretty screamingly obvious that he, Danny was a cop and that the gunman, Tino had caught him snooping around outside, but Danny didn't share his opinions with his new friends.
"Well, we're screwed" the second voice Danny had heard from outside piped up as its owner stepped forward. It belonged to a young man in his twenties with the dark hair and eyes of an Italian. The kid was handsome and he knew it, holding his face carefully even thought there was no one around to admire his high cheekbones and masculine pout. He stepped close to Danny, staring down at him from his six feet four inches of height with a less than pleased look on that oh so perfect face. Danny had a sudden urge to break the kid's nose. The kid sighed.
His less attractive companion was as tall as he was but nowhere near as handsome. He was clearly a boxer, his nose already flattened, his face lumpy and uneven. Danny pegged him as an easy heavyweight; the sweater the guy wore as his only protection against the cold was straining at the seams around his massive arms. It was also splattered with fresh blood. The two separate Danny's noticed these things, the CSI Danny figuring that the blood splatters where spray back from the shooting while the Danny who had survived Tanglewood eyed the big guys reach, watched how Handsome let his gaze wader all over the room. Both Danny's reminded him of the two other guys in the room, Tino who still pressed the gun to Danny's neck and the as yet unseen fourth man. Even as Danny thought of him the guy walked out from behind Danny, grinning from ear to ear.
"I don't believe it!" the guy exclaimed as Danny figured that this guy too, was taller than him but seemed painfully thin under his clothes. "Danny fucking Messer!" Skinny stated and Danny stared at him, confusion racing across his mind.
"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Danny asked, grateful that his voice didn't shake.
"Danny it's me! Vince, Vince Pencamo, we went to high school together" Skinny, Vince explained and Danny gazed up at him mentally adding weight to the face, removing a few hard years.
"Holy shit" he said blankly and Vince grinned again, looking around at his companions who seemed as confused by the exchange as Danny had been.
"Vince, long time no see" Danny greeted him carefully.
"Yeah man. I guess its true then, that you're a cop now?" Vince asked, his eyes growing cold as he waved to the badge Danny wore on his belt.
"Well, sort of. My job is on the more scientific side of it" Danny told him, his voice still careful and blank. He got the feeling that all was not right inside of Vince, his head included.
"How'd you mean?"
"Well, you know your fingerprints? I'm the guy who finds them and collects them and finds out that they're yours. I'm a CSI, a Crime Scene Investigator." He replied.
"Oh. I guess you're here about that whole thing back there" Vince waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the crime scene. "You know how it is Danny, these two here-" he motioned to Handsome and Boxer "they want to make the grade, get into the gang. We had an errand needed running any way so we figure what better way for them to make their bones right!" Vince said, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear and a lighter firm his jacket pocket. "You remember when you had to do it" he said casually as he lit the cigarette.
"No, I don't, I never did that remember?" Danny corrected "I ran some messages back and forth and got my ass kicked a bunch of times for you guys but I never killed anybody for Tanglewood" he stated, choosing his words carefully.
"Oh yeah. That's right, Dino and Howard loved you, even when you said no to 'em over stuff, they couldn't get enough of this runty little blonde kid who doted on his old man and played baseball better than any kid I ever saw." Vince mused, his voice still cold. "You know, I really, really hated you"
"Yeah, I know, you kept picking fights with me" Danny agreed.
"I did, didn't I? Hey you remember, I used to kick the shit out of you every time we got into it?" Vince asked, taking a long drag on the cigarette, his voice growing warm with the recollection.
"No, actually, I don't" Danny smiled grimly.
Vince grinned, shrugging and casting a look around at the other three who smirked back "Well I don't blame you, I wouldn't remember too good either if somebody bounced my head off've the pavement-" he started to brag.
Danny interrupted him " No, I mean, I don't remember you kickin my ass whenever me and you got into it because the only time you ever beat me that bad was those times when you had your brothers wait around for me after school and hit me from behind. Those times, you put me in the hospital more'n once, but when it was just me and you goin at it, I beat you like the bitch that you always where" He stated, his voice matter of fact calm.
Vince flicked the cigarette at Danny in a practised movement, the lit butt catching Danny on the cheek. Danny swiped at it as Vince moved toward him fist raised, and Danny just had time to figure which side the blow was coming from before Vince hit him and he staggered. Boxer and Handsome moved so that the four encircled him and Danny lunged for Handsome, swinging with a single intent. His fist connected and Handsome's nose crumpled under his knuckles, blood spurting from his nostrils. Handsome roared, spinning away and falling to the ground and even as someone hit Danny from behind he grinned maniacally at the blood on his knuckles. He hit the floor and rolled as feet stomped down where he had been, the movement bringing him onto his hands and knee's. Someone kicked him incredibly hard and he gasped as he felt something crack and blood well up in his mouth. He spat the blood and tried to stand but some one big, he figured Boxer, punched downwards, catching him in the side of the head with a blow that dizzied him. His arms gave out, then his knees and suddenly he was laying on the floor, curled up as small as he could get while they kicked and punched him.
Some one grabbed the back of his jacket and dragged him to his feet, his every bone, muscle and organ screaming in protest. Danny blinked but there was blood in his eyes and his glasses where gone. "Vince there's a dozen cops comin' our way!" someone snapped and Danny felt himself be pulled forward. His legs didn't seem to want to work and he tripped, grabbing for the arm of whoever held his jacket. His right wrist flared in pain and it took him longer than he liked to recognise the pain of a broken bone.
Vince's voice sounded nearby and Danny realised that it must have been Vince holding him up. "AAW SHIT!" Vince spat "Screw it, start the car, we'll blow outta here" He told the others.
"What about him?"
"I got a plan for him just get in the car!" Vince yelled as he dragged Danny again.
Danny blinked rapidly and found he could see a little clearer. The light had changed and there was a cold wind blowing against his skin. Danny could hear and smell the river. He wondered why that was as he was propelled forward and some where, far away, someone yelled his name. He blinked again and wiped at his eyes with his left hand. It helped, his focus wasn't great but he could see.
"Can't have you telling your cop buddies who did the shootin' now can we Danny boy?" Vince hissed in his ear and suddenly Danny knew what Vince's plan was.
He grabbed at Vince's jacket with his good arm." Vince you kill me and every cop in this city is gonna come after you" Danny growled, finding it a lot harder to speak than it should have been.
He noticed a feeling of heaviness on one side of his head and pain shooting through his skull like a laser guided bullet. His vision dimmed and he had a brief moment to wonder when he had gotten hit in the head before Vince shoved him backwards. Then he was falling and then he hit the water which was colder than anything he had ever known. His entire body stopped, as though someone had thrown a switch and he couldn't remember how to breathe. The heaviness in his head began to grow and although he knew he was under water, and that this was a bad thing, he just couldn't think if what he was supposed to do to fix it. His lungs told him to breath and that seemed like a good idea so he had opened his mouth to draw in air before his mind was able to remind him about being under water. He still couldn't seem to remember how to swim even though he knew that he knew how, he remembered that day at the community pool when he was five and his dad had said 'first lesson' and thrown him, literally, in at the deep end. 'I was a friggin expert swimmer after that', Danny told himself.
He noticed that the heavy feeling in his head was gone and now he felt tired, and since he couldn't see any reason not to just let the fatigue win him over, he did.
"NO!" Mac, Aiden and Flack all screamed as one as the cadaverously thin man pushed the obviously beaten Danny off the side of the Jetty. They opened fire as the man ran back into the boathouse and seconds later a new looking jeep burst out through the half rotten doors, speeding up the narrow road that led to the gate. Mac ran for the boat house with the others close behind as on of the uniforms began yelling into his radio for paramedics and rescue, and for the cops on the gate to intercept the Jeep.
They ran through the shattered doors, each cop or CSI noticing the smashed camera, the smashed glasses and the blood on the floor. As the reached the jetty the officers slowed just enough that they could test the rotten wood before proceeding. They edged forward, heading for the broken section of railing from which Danny had been pushed. "I don't see him!" someone called "The currents pretty strong, he might have been dragged"
"There!" Flack yelled, vaulting the railing nearer to the boathouse so that he landed on the little beach in front of the boat house. He dropped 15 feet and hit the ground running. Mac followed suit and Aiden lowered herself enough that she was hanging on by her fingertips from the jetty before letting herself drop. The sand absorbed most of her momentum and she didn't break an ankle in the high heeled boots she wore and she ran up the beach to where the others where dragging Danny form the water.
They turned him onto his back and where administering CPR as she reached them. Danny was too pale, his already fair skin tinted blue. He wasn't moving, he wasn't breathing, he just lay there while Mac knelt above him, raised on his knees as he pressed down on Danny's chest, pumping rhythmically. Flack had his hands on Danny's face, holding his mouth open as he breathed air into his lungs.
"Oh God" Aiden breathed, stepping closer to see if she could do anything to help.
Danny just lay there. He only moved because of how hard Mac was pressing on his chest while Flack swore in time with Mac's compressions.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit" he counted off the compressions before doing his part.
Aiden heard the whoop of an ambulance somewhere above them and looked up at the barrier. "Can they get down here!" She turned to one of the uniforms.
"I…" The uniform turned to some of the others who had followed them down onto the beach "you two head up that way, you, Mike, climb back up on the jetty and intercept that bus, tell the medics where we are, tell them we need, uh, oxygen, blankets, I don't know, adrenalin, tell them he's cold, go now" The older man waved two of the younger men up the beach in the opposite direction from the jetty "Find some kind of a boat ramp or something, some way for them to get down here with a stretcher" he yelled as they jogged away.
Aiden smiled a grim thank you. At him and turned back to Danny.
"Wait, wait!" Mac was saying.
Flack paused and stared down at Danny anxiously. Danny coughed, water welling up in his mouth. Mac grabbed Danny's shoulder and turned him onto his side, thumping his back to bring up more water. Danny coughed again.
"Hey, Danny boy, wrong time of year to take a swim buddy, come on, wake up" Flack leant down to pat Danny's face gently.
Danny was taking short, rapid breaths, but he didn't respond.
"Danny, I'm not kidding man, wake up, you're scaring Mac" Flack tried again. There was no response. " I'm not getting anything" He looked up at Mac and Aiden.
Aiden looked up the beach as Mac began to shrug out of his jacket to cover Danny. "Mac, the paramedics are coming, there's a boat ramp up there" She told her boss, pulling her own jacket off and handing it to Mac.
"Damn it he's really cold, and his pulse is hardly there" Mac said, his fingers pressed to Danny's neck.
"Christ, somebody kicked his ass Mac, his heads bleedin' all over the place, I think his arm might be broken" Flack growled. He grabbed his radio again. "Eddie let every body know, that jeep that raced out of here so fast, make sure our people know they tried to kill a cop" he stated, his voice filled with barely restrained anger.
Aiden stepped back as the paramedics arrived, pulling Mac backwards with her.
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and turned away from the grim faced medics as she punched in Stella Bonasera's number. The older woman answered the phone on the third ring, her voice thick with sleep.
"Someone better be dead" she growled, and Aiden felt tears well up into her eyes.
"Um, we're at the crime scene, Danny's hurt" she started.
"Where are you!" Stella asked, her voice instantly alert. Aiden told her. "I'll be there" she snapped and the phone clicked off.
Aiden turned back to see that the paramedics had moved Danny onto a stretcher and where getting ready to move him. One of them was holding a bag near his face, pumping oxygen into the mask that covered Danny's nose and mouth. He was covered in one of those thermal blankets that looked like tinfoil, and Mac was holding the coats, a helpless look on his face.
" I called Stella" Aiden told him, not knowing what else she could say.
Mac nodded. "Okay, good" He said, watching as the paramedics began to wheel Danny away "Alright, I'll go with them to the hospital, Aiden, you and Flack go back to the original scene and keep working it, remember that the guys that did that are the same guys that…that did this. When Stella gets here, she can work the boathouse, and I'll call in some of the night shift guys to help out. Flack, can you arrange for some uniforms to meet me at the hospital?" he turned to the younger man.
"Yeah, of course. Wait, why, you think he's gonna need protection?" Flack asked.
"The guy who pushed didn't seem to be trying to cover his face at all, he really didn't think we would be able to get Danny out of the water in time" He began to explain, starting to shiver in the snow.
"We almost didn't" Flack said grimly.
"We almost didn't, but we did, he's breathing, and right now he's our star witness, I want him protected, this is going to be all over the news, I can feel it and if the guys chasing em don't catch them, the killers and who ever else might have been helping them are going to know that he's alive." Mac finished.
Flack was nodding, his dark blue eyes full of anger the way his voice had been. "Hey Mac, purely out of curiosity, what would happen if when I brought a guy in, say somebody who, I don't know, hurt a cop or something, hypothetically speaking of course, and he complained about how all these cops beat the crap out of him?" he asked, his tone conversational.
"Would this hypothetical guy have bruises?" Mac replied his own tones blank.
Flack wrinkled his nose as he thought. "He wouldn't have to" he stated.
"Then he wouldn't have a case. But if he did have bruises, his lawyer might be able to get him off, if he was convincing enough. Why do you ask?"
"Like I said, I'm just curious. I guess you learn something new everyday huh? What if he resisted arrest and we where forced to subdue him. Excessively. With night sticks?" Flack continued.
"Hey, if the guys resisting arrest you're allowed to shoot him" Aiden put in.
"That's right, I'd forgotten that. You better go Mac, they'll leave without you" Flack smiled and raised his radio again.
As Aiden walked past him, heading for the boat ramp, she was sure she heard him telling the uniforms he was speaking to about not leaving any marks. But she couldn't swear to it.