A/N: I was going to wait to post this until I had finished my other stories, but the idea keeps brewing in my head and won't go away, so I figured I'd put this out there and see what the response is. This is my first CSI:NY story – I've tried hard to keep the characters as in-character as possible given that this is something that will never occur on the show, but please let me know if anything seems to be too far-fetched. There will be lots of twists and turns in this story, lots of secrets being revealed and relationships being altered. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I've been enjoying writing it!
A note on the timeline – this story picks up about a year and a half ahead of where the show is right now. There will be some flashbacks showing things that happened in the intervening time, but hopefully things won't be too confusing. This first chapter really just serves to set the scene, with most of the "meat" of the story starting to show up in the next chapter.
I adore reviews, so please leave one to let me know what you think - good, bad or indifferent! I am always open to constructive criticism and to your suggestions for directions I should go in. All input is welcomed and appreciated!
Disclaimer: No, I don't own CSI:NY or any of its wonderful characters. I make no money off of them and I claim no rights to them.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings, let's get this story rolling...
No matter the city, no matter the state, there is a habit that all police officers share, one that transcends geography, personal history or rank. From the rookie patrol officer working his first beat, to the crime scene investigator who spends more time in the lab than on the streets, to the seasoned veteran about to punch his twenty and get out, there is one habit that always holds true.
One of the first things a rookie is shown during his first shift is how to locate the emergency frequency on his police radio. Throughout his career, it becomes second nature to flick the radio to that channel as he walks through the front door, leaving it set until he leaves to punch in for his next shift. When they retire, some officers will stop setting their radios when they walk through the door – the good ones, though, the true cops whose blood runs as blue as the uniform they wore so proudly, they never stop. In that simple action, an officer, whether retired or simply off-duty, says more than words ever could. I'm with you, the action says to all the others still out there. I may not wear the uniform today, but I still stand with you.
The emergency frequency is rarely activated – only the most urgent of calls will go out on this channel. As a rookie, every call makes the officer sit up and pay attention. As the job hardens him, though, the codes stop having the same effect – hearing 'ten-thirty-three' crackle over the radio no longer gives him pause and 'ten-thirty-five' ceases to cause his heart to race the way it once did.
Regardless of how much time he spends on the job, though, there is one call that will always draw an officer's attention. No matter how hardened he becomes, there is one call that will always make an officer's blood run cold, one call that will always cause his heart to race as he sends up a silent prayer, one call that will always be enough to jolt him out of a dead sleep.
That one call is the ten-double-zero – officer down.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like hell, Jess," Stella Bonasera commented as she walked into the Upper West Side apartment that was the site of her latest crime scene.
"I know," Jessica Angell sighed. "I don't think I've had a good night's sleep in the last three weeks."
"The Mendoza case?" Stella asked sympathetically.
"It's been a long time since I worked a case that draining," Angell said. "We finally cracked the bastard this morning, though."
"I heard," Stella nodded, kneeling down beside the dead body. "Why aren't you at home in bed?"
"I was on my way out when the call came in," Angell said. "Everyone else was busy with some big case on the Upper East Side, so I figured I could manage a simple suicide before I go hibernate for the next week."
"Gotcha," Stella laughed. "This one does look pretty open-and-shut. Do we have an I.D. on the victim?"
"Rachel Corcoran," Angell said. "Super says she lived here two years, model tenant, keeps to herself and always pays the rent on time. Lives alone, no boyfriend that anyone seems to know about."
"Sure looks like suicide to me," Stella said, photographing an empty pill bottle on the kitchen counter before bagging it for evidence. "Give me a few minutes to bag up this evidence, and you should be able to head home soon."
"Not soon enough," Angell shook her head as she continued to look around the apartment, unfazed by a slight rustling coming from the next room.
"Did you hear that?" Stella asked, pausing and looking toward the bedroom door.
"Probably just the wind," Angell said. "First on scene must have forgotten to close the windows."
"I don't think that was the wind," Stella said, pulling her gun out of its holster. "Cover my back while I check this out."
Don Flack was sitting through what could only be described as one of the most uncomfortable dinners of his life when he heard the call. Considering the nightmare that most dinners with his parents turned out to be, he figured it was saying a lot that they weren't even halfway through the meal and he'd already declared it one of the worst he'd had to sit through.
Frankly, Don was surprised that his mother had even had time to cook, given the immense amount of time she and his father seemed to have put into preparing lectures for their two children. Her patience was not helped by the fact that she hadn't been able to serve dinner until well after ten o'clock because his shift had once again run late.
"Donnie, don't think I don't hear the stories," his mother said, taking another bite of her pasta while Don simply swirled his around on the plate. Although he was usually a man with an insatiable appetite, something about listening to his mother lecture him on his dating habits had effectively killed the meal for him.
"Do ya now, Ma?" Don asked sarcastically. "There's a real shock."
"Well, your father may be retired, but that doesn't mean I don't still have friends with husbands and sons on the force, Donnie," she said. "I still hear what goes on down in those precincts. Do you have any idea what it's like to hear Marla Duncan – Marla Duncan, for Christ's sake, Donnie, a woman who can't keep her own husband in bed at night for more than two days straight – tellin' me that I ought to have a chat with my boy about the way he goes through women?"
"Well, Ma, I got a feelin' you're about to tell me exactly what it's like," Don sighed.
"I'll tell you, Donnie, it's mortifying," his mother continued, ignoring her son's sarcasm. "Absolutely mortifying. When are you going to grow up, Donnie? Find yourself a girl who'll stick around more than three or four weeks? You're not too old yet, you know…I'm sure I could still find you a nice, respectable girl down at the church."
"I'd sooner shoot myself, Ma," Don mumbled under his breath.
"You're not getting any younger, Donnie," his mother said. "I know you kids today think you can wait forever, but you really can't, you know. You've got to strike while the iron's hot, Donnie…and I hate to say it, but you're an iron that's close to cooling off. You don't want to be sixty when your kids are in high school, Donnie."
Glancing into the kitchen, where his father and sister had moved a few minutes earlier, Don could tell Samantha wasn't having an easy time with their father, either. Don still wasn't sure how he'd even managed to convince her to come, given the resentment she felt toward their father – rightfully so, in Don's opinion, after everything the man had said and done in the past year. Nevertheless, he was still their father and he had been adamant about wanting both his children to be there for dinner that evening.
His mother had opened her mouth again to resume her lecture when the words came crackling over his father's police radio, which sat tucked away in a corner of the room, always tuned to the emergency frequency. A hush fell over the room as all four of them listened to the words every officer dreads hearing.
All units, ten-double-zero reported at 400 West 96th Street; repeat, ten-double-zero, all units please respond.
Danny Messer bolted upright in his bed as the call came over the radio. In his sleep-filled haze, he hoped he'd heard wrong, but his heart only tightened as the dispatcher continued.
Repeat, ten-double-zero, all units please respond.
"Turn it off," the still-drunk blonde he'd picked up earlier that evening groaned as she threw an arm over his chest, trying to pull him back into bed. As he shoved her arm off, Danny remembered again why he hated one night stands. They never understood the job and they never understood him. He'd known it the moment the blonde had complained about the baby toys in the living room, but he'd been able to ignore it until this moment.
Lindsay would never have said anything about his radio. In fact, Lindsay would probably have been up and dressed, ready to rush to the scene long before Danny had even processed what he had heard. Lindsay understood this part of the job in a way that a woman unconnected to the job never could.
Lindsay. He could have sworn that he felt his heart stop momentarily as he remembered their conversation from earlier. Someone had screwed up the schedule; she'd asked him to take Allie that night since she was unexpectedly on call. He'd refused, although at the moment he was having a hard time remembering why. All he could think about was the fact that Lindsay was on call tonight. He knew the way the system worked – CSIs arrived after the crime, not during, thus rarely coming into the line of fire. The chances of Lindsay being the officer down were slim. Nevertheless, the strange feeling in his gut had him worried.
"You're leaving?" the blonde pouted from under the covers. "I thought we were having fun."
"I'm a cop, this is my job," Danny said gruffly, opening the drawer in his bedside table and grabbing his badge and service weapon.
"What's a ten-zero anyway?" the blonde asked.
Danny grimaced at her mistake. "Ten-double-zero," he corrected.
"Whatever, it's all the same," the blonde sighed in annoyance.
"No, no it's not all the same," Danny snapped. "A ten-zero is a warning to proceed with caution. Ten-double-zero means officer down, damn it. There's a big fucking difference."
"You're not working tonight," the blonde said. "Why are you going?"
"I'm going because it's what cops do," Danny said, grabbing the blonde by the arm and practically dragging her out of the bed. "Get up, you're leaving too."
"Why?" the blonde asked naively.
"I'm not stupid," Danny sighed. "I'm not leaving you here alone so you can rip me off. You can go home, back to the bar, I don't really care, but you aren't staying here. Now hurry up!"
Mac Taylor and Lindsay Monroe were wrapping up several hours of processing at a high-profile double homicide on the Upper East Side when the call came crackling out from the radios on the belts of the dozen or so uniformed officers in or near the small apartment that was their crime scene.
All units, ten-double-zero reported at 400 West 96th Street; repeat, ten-double-zero, all units please respond.
"Detective Taylor, where do we stand?" the lead detective, a new transfer from narcotics, asked.
"We've just finished," Mac said, reading the young man's intentions clearly. "Leave a uniform to watch the apartment. The rest of you can head over to the West Side. Detective Monroe and I will take this evidence back to the lab and meet you at the hospital."
"Thanks," the detective smiled wearily, grabbing his radio and calling in to dispatch to let them know that his unit was on its way.
"Mac?" Lindsay asked nervously.
"What is it, Lindsay?" Mac asked, taking in her panic-stricken appearance.
"That address…400 West 96th? That's what dispatch said, right?" she asked, her hands shaking.
"Yeah, it is," Mac said. "Why? Do you know someone who lives there?"
"Not exactly," Lindsay said. "But that call-out that came in right after we got here…Mac, I think we sent a team to that address tonight."
"Damn it," Mac muttered. "Who else was on call tonight?"
"Hawkes, I think," Lindsay said. "Stella worked the last three nights, so I'm pretty sure she was off. Oh Mac, what if it was Hawkes?"
"Let's just get this evidence back to the lab and get over to the hospital before we freak out, alright?" Mac suggested, grabbing the final evidence box and heading toward their SUV, Lindsay following closely behind him.
Sheldon Hawkes smiled to himself as he sat across from his old friend and former colleague, Julia Harper, as they sipped late night coffees at a café in the West Village.
"I still can't believe you're back, Jules," Hawkes commented. "You look wonderful – those years in Minnesota did you good."
"Thanks," Julia smiled shyly. "I loved being back where I grew up, but somehow, it just didn't feel like home anymore. You know, when I left I said I wouldn't miss this city at all, but I guess it just gets in your blood. I missed the lights, and the noises, and the chaos of a twenty-four hour life…in Minnesota, the only thing open after nine is the Dairy Queen."
"I never did see you as a small town girl," Hawkes said.
"Back when we were interns, who would have thought we'd end up like this?" Julia asked. "Me, returning to big city life after a far too long stint in small town family practice, and you, a cop?"
"My career has certainly been anything but ordinary," Hawkes agreed.
"Do you wear a uniform?" Julia asked, her eyebrows raised in curiosity.
"I'm a crime scene investigator," Hawkes said. "I moved straight from the M.E.'s office into the field, so I never went to the academy. Technically, I'm a civilian police employee, not a cop, so no uniform."
"That's too bad," Julia said.
"Why's that?" Hawkes asked curiously.
"I've always had a thing for a man in a uniform," Julia smirked as she took a sip of coffee, pausing as her cell phone began to ring.
"Julia Harper," she said, listening carefully to the person on the other end of the line, occasionally nodding or muttering 'okay'. "I'm on my way now. I'll be there in twenty, tops."
"Duty calls?" Hawkes asked in disappointment.
"We've got three GSWs coming in," Julia said. "Some sort of shoot-out at a crime scene in the West 90s."
"A crime scene?" Hawkes asked in concern. "Did they say if the GSWs were civilians or cops?"
"The call nurse said they were all cops," Julia said, her voice softening as she saw the concern on Hawkes' face and immediately kicked herself for forgetting the tight bond that ran among even a large police force like the NYPD.
"I'm coming with you," Hawkes said, quickly tossing a few bills on the table and pulling out Julia's chair before quickly ushering her out of the café and into his car.