Bad Can Turn Good
Chapter 1: Involvement
"Stella, come here for a minute," Mac calls down the hallway.
The curly haired detective turns around and walks to him. "What do you need, Mac?"
"This is Detective Scotty Valens from the cold case unit in Philadelphia," he indicates the man standing beside him. "Detective Valens, this is Stella Bonasera."
"Nice to meet you," Scotty shakes her hand.
"You too," Stella smiles at him before looking back towards Mac. "I'm sorry for being rude but Adam just gave us a big break in the case. I've got to find Lindsay and Flack so we can pick the guy up." Stella starts to walk away.
Mac grabs her arm. "Stel, he's not here to help us on a case. He and his partner finally identified one of the bodies found in an alley after about thirty years. They reopened the case and ran the DNA that was found on a bloody jacket next to the body through CODIS again. This time they got a match. Your blood covers that jacket, Stella. Detective Valens and I need to know what happened that night."
"You said you were from Philadelphia?"
Valens nods. "If you don't mind, we should take this to an interrogation room."
"I'm pretty sure I've never been to Philadelphia in my life. I don't know how my blood got on that jacket," she looks over at Mac. Although his face remains emotionless, she sees in his eyes that he believes her.
"We still need to talk in more detail," Scotty tries to lead her to interrogation.
"Can I get these results to Lindsay first?" Mac nods, and the two men follow her into the layout room. "Linds, Adam got a match in CODIS to the DNA we found. Get Don and pick this guy up."
"Why aren't you coming?" Lindsay looks behind Stella at the two men.
"It's a long story," she leaves and follows Mac and Scotty into an interrogation room. They sit on one side of the table and her on the other.
"Can you tell me where you were on the night of August 18, 1979?" Scotty asks.
She frowns. "That was twenty-eight years ago; I have no idea what I was doing then except trying to avoid getting injured by my foster parents at that time."
"They had hurt you before?" Mac asks, a little surprised.
"Not particularly that pair but others. I think that date was shortly after I moved to my… third set of foster parents, I guess it was. The last one had locked me in a closet for a week and only fed me once a day when I corrected his grammar."
Mac has to avoid looking at her so he doesn't imagine her as a child; he had known she didn't have a good childhood but he didn't know it was this bad.
"Do you recognize this woman?" Scotty puts a picture on the table in front of her.
"Yeah, she was my second foster mother. Her husband's the one who locked me in the closet. A couple of times she would try to sneak food to me when her husband was gone but the other kids would always tell him."
"Is it possible you killed her in revenge for keeping you locked up?"
"No. If I wanted revenge, I would've gone after her husband; he was the one who punished me. She didn't agree with him and the severity of the punishment. I think she was afraid to stand up to him," Stella looks over at Mac for comfort, but his expression is blank. "Why do you think I killed her because my blood was in that alley with her? Did you consider that maybe I just happened to be with her when someone killed her and that they tried to hurt me too? Or maybe she was returning the jacket to me, and it had blood on it because her husband had beaten me when I was wearing it."
"Stel, you said you'd never been to Philadelphia before; how would the jacket have gotten there?"
"I was eight years old when she was killed; to a kid that young, do you think Pittsburg and New York look a whole lot different?"
"Detective Taylor, I left the file with all her past guardians' names and addresses in your office. Would you mind getting it?" When Mac leaves, Scotty turns back to Stella. "You know something. I will charge you with murder if you don't tell me what it is."
"Do you have a picture of this jacket found by the body?" she knows she has to confess or she'll be put in jail. He hands one to her. "I… I was going to run away with her. She came to get me one night, pretending to be from child services so my foster parents would give me up. She didn't have to pretend; any one of them would have given me to her even if she was a man who wanted to rape me. We took a train from Grand Central Station to somewhere in Philadelphia, making plans of our new life together. She was the only person who ever cared about me; I cared about her too. It was dark out as we walked down the street. This man just came from nowhere. I ran as fast as I could to get away but he caught up. While we were running, he kept swinging this knife at me. It cut my back the one time, but I didn't stop. The scar is still there if you want to see it. I had actually ran in a circle and ended up in the alley where we first saw him. She was just laying there. I… I was afraid to touch her. My jacket must have fallen off as I tried to climb into the dumpster when I heard him coming. I ran away when I was sure he was gone and found some playground. I must have passed out there because I was in the hospital the next morning. Because they couldn't find a guardian with me, they ran my picture through the system and got a match. I was taken back to New York to another foster family. Since then, I have only cared for Mac as much as I cared for her. I was too afraid of losing someone I cared about again."
Mac enters, having heard most of her story from the observation room. After handing Scotty the file, he says, "I trust you won't be charging her with anything. I have to go take care of something else. Excuse me."
Scotty opens the file and gives her her birth certificate. "I have other bad news."
"This is all in Greek. Why? I was born in New York."
"You were born in Athens. Your mother brought you here shortly after and put you in foster care. Detective Bonasera, this isn't exactly your fault but you don't have a green card or anything. In order to stay here, you have thirty days to become a citizen or marry a citizen."
A/N: The only thing I can say is this story probably isn't very accurate in what actually happens, but I wrote it anyway for the whole citizen thing. I can't for the life of me remember where I got the idea from. This one has a happy ending for once. And I don't watch Cold Case so I don't know what Scotty is like. Over the next week I'll have the last two chapters up for you guys. I gotta go fix my mom's iPod. Please review. Hope you like it so far.