Hey everyone! This is my very first story so I'm like super excited. Please, and I mean pretty please, let me know what you think. I love feedback so lay it on me. Also, I just want to say I'm not at all from New York City and am not a CSI. All my locations are pretty much from my imagination and my forensic facts are from books from my library so I apologize if anything is inaccurate. Also, I apologize if there are any mistakes. Thanks again. –Andie.
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Chapter One: Spring's Irony
Spring is when life's alive in everything
~ Christina Rossetti
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April in New York City was a month of transition. In the beginning, the lingering elements of winter remain; cold mornings greet waking workers while cool afternoons stray into the equation. As the month moves forward, those cold mornings lessen in numbers and sunny afternoons become more recurrent. Bushes greeted the warmth with blooms of yellow and white, emerging in the most graceful of fashions. Leaves came unto trees like stars in the night sky; each appears individually, yet the entire completion of the act seemed almost theatrical.
People began to pack away their thick winter coats and wool hats. The backs of closets are searched, flip flops as the core target. Dogs see the outside more often and kids enter playgrounds with joyful thoughts, excited that mothers no longer bundled them up to the fullest capacity. Vendors become grateful, for the cold beverages that rested easily on their carts became seemingly more alluring to those who walked past. As April comes to an end, the snow and ice of winter are long forgotten and minds turn to the heat waiting in the distance to take over. For some, the tone of the city becomes lighter, life seeming more promising in ways. However, not all welcomed the warmth with traditions and customs of happiness. Some found the time to become the darkest of moments, the longest of hours, and the heaviest for the hearts.
For some, the end of the cold, was the start of a different kind of cold; a cold that overcomes the heart when it is faced with the loss of a life.
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April 23, 2009 7:29am
Detective Donald Flack Jr. received the call at exactly 7:14 am. A body was found in an alley across the street from the south side of Central Park. Despite the morning glow that was slowly seeping onto the congested streets and crowded gray sidewalks, the alley still held a dark and gloomy mood, one that was pre-existing to the feeling created from the obvious murder that had taken place. The walls on both sides displayed worn weathered bricks of burgundy, another factor that contributed to the ever darkening disposition of the scene.
He glanced up and down the alley, his eyes searching for anything that could be deemed suspicious. The alley seemed to be one out a movie or TV show, predictable: trash overflowing out of dumpsters, garbage cans gathered up against the walls, and the remains of the shelter once used by the homeless, placed strategically near the backdoor of the neighboring restaurant.
He looked back down at the body of the man that laid face down in the middle of the alley. He was dressed casually in khaki pants and a navy blue polo. His short brown hair was covered in the blood that came from the wound located on the back of his head. Flack was no doctor, but he could guess that the injury was the reason the man was no longer living.
The incoming sound of footsteps caused him to look up. He glanced towards the street at the located at the end of the alley to see two familiar faces approaching.
Detectives Mac Taylor and Stella Bonasera arrived in their regular manner. They held their kits as though they were the secret weapons and the crime scene was the battlefield of a viscous war. Each dressed in their respective fashion, Mac in a dark suit, minus the tie and Stella, who began to take full advantage of the warming weather, opting for gray dress slacks and a cerulean blue top. Mac reached him, giving him a short nod before moving to bend over the body completely.
"So, the call came in at about 7:06 this morning. Mr. Delgado, the owner of the restaurant located there," he started, pointing to the restaurant whose side door was located in the alley, "was in early to clean up. He came outside to throw out some trash and was greeted to this," he continued, throwing a glance in the direction of the body. "According to him, he came closer to check for a pulse, but decided against after seeing all the blood. Ran in to call 911," he informed them. It was his version of a greeting. They would walk in, and he would tell them what he knew.
"You find any ID?" Stella questioned as she looked up at Flack.
"Matthew Garrison, age 32. His wallet was in his back pocket."
"What about cash?" she inquired.
"Yeah. That and a couple of credit cards which makes me think that it wasn't a robbery," he answered.
Mac continued to stare silently at the body. His trained eyes scanned over every detail of the corpse. Through the crimson blood he could see what looked to be a gunshot wound positioned at the back of the head, however it was too thick to try to estimate the range from which the shot was fired. His looked further down the body, searching for any possible trace to be found.
His eyes landed on a small strand of hair on the back of the shirt. He pulled out a pair of tweezers from his kit and carefully lifted the hair from the body.
"Is that a hair?" Stella asked, moving to get a closer look.
"A brown hair." Mac lifted his arm up higher, revealing the length. "From the look of it, it seems to belong to a woman."
"I don't know Mac. I've seen some guys in this city with freakishly long hair," Flack commented.
Mac sent a small smirk in Flack's direction as he stepped back from the body, giving Stella room to take pictures of the body in the current position. He carefully placed the hair into a small evidence bag that he removed from his kit.
Stella moved closer to the victim, armed with the large black device. She looked through lens, adjusting the settings to give her a full view of the body. She went to take a close up of the wound in the back of the head.
She drew her face back from the screen, looking down at the body. The portion of the arms that were faced in her direction held small diagonal cuts, each going in different directions.
"Check this out Mac," she said, drawing the attention of both men.
"They look like defensive wounds," he stated.
"He fought back," Flack concluded, stating the obvious.
"So Matthew Garrison comes into the alley and gets attacked?" Stella pondered, her brain trying to calculate the different scenarios.
"Why would he be in the alley?" Mac asked, building on to Stella's theory.
"Maybe he was meeting someone," she suggested.
"A meeting in an alley in the middle of the night? Seems a little shady," Flack observed.
"Well until Sid can give us a time of death, we don't know how long he was actually here." Mac looked towards the door of the restaurant. "Maybe he was going to see Mr. Delgado or another employee at the restaurant."
Flack shook his head. "Well Mr. Delgado says he has never heard of Matthew Garrison. I'll get a list of employees, see if there's any connection though."
Mac nodded, his eyes still locked on the victim. He waited for Stella to finish taking the photographs before speaking again. "Stella, help me turn him over."
Stella placed her camera on top of the kit that lay not too far from the body. She moved backed towards the man, and placed her gloved hands on his shoulders while Mac pushed on his legs. The stiffness in the body was evident as the two detectives carefully rolled the man on his back. Immediately, all three pairs of eyes went to the man's chest.
"What the hell," Flack muttered, speaking for all of them.
The front of Matthew Garrison's shirt had been ripped opened, revealing a large wound on his chest. Starting at the top, the cavernous slash went all the way to his lower abdomen, leaving behind a gruesome trail of ripped skin.
Stella looked up at Mac, a somber expression on her face. "Why would someone do this?"
"Crime of passion," he answered grimly, giving her a look of both anger and determination, a look that she was familiar with.
Stella tilted her head to the side, looking closely at the wound. "Do you guys see that?" she asked as she stood up and took a few steps back from the body.
Mac did the same, coming to stand next to her. "It's a four," he stated.
Sure enough, the outline of the indentation on the skin of the body was that of the number four. The four took up the entire surface of Garrison's chest, leaving no breaks in its path.
"That's a little creepy," Flack announced.
"A little?" Stella asked him before turning to Mac. "If this is a message, it could be a sign that there are numbers one through three out there somewhere."
"Until we know that, let's treat it as a single case. The four might be representing something else," he told her.
"But Mac, why else would someone take the time to carve that. I mean, it's not an easy thing to do," she countered, unhappy with his reasoning.
"I don't know Stella, but unless we find a number one through three, we can't assume anything?"
Stella nodded as she turned her head towards the street at the end of the alley. The sun was now completely in the sky, looking down on the city like a face revealed from the heavens beyond. She could see that the streets were now fully illuminated, cars glistening in the glow, streets becoming brighter by the minute. People made their way onto sidewalks, each heading in a different direction to arrive on time to their individual destinations. The city was alive now.
Matthew Garrison however, was not.