A/N : Please read profile for disclaimer. This fic is set post season2 and pre-season3 or if you prefer in a Peyton free season 3. Just a shortish story with a vaguely spooky theme for Halloween and a Mac/Stella story to redress the balance (for those who were complaining that I have written too many Mac/Jo, Mac/Christine stories and not enough Mac/Stella.)
Prologue
It had started as an ordinary case and not a particularly difficult one at that. The murder had been solved in a matter of hours thanks to a series of clues, a little leg-work and a couple of lucky breaks. The aftermath had been harder to deal with but they'd got over that or at least Stella thought they had.
It was the woman that was the problem. The woman in the photograph. The woman with the high-necked collar and the flowers in her hair. She had become an obsession. She filled his thoughts when he wasn't working on a case or trawling his way through the piles of paperwork on his desk. Stella would catch him looking at the photograph he had propped up against the lamp in his office or going through the thin file that was becoming dog-eared with handling. He always denied it but she knew he was lying. He couldn't leave it alone. During the day she filled his every waking moment and she haunted his dreams at night.
Stella huddled into her heavy coat as she shivered in the cold sleet that fell covering the side-walk in a grey slippery slush. Her feet were frozen despite her boots and she pushed her ice-cold fingers deeper into her pockets. She felt guilty for following him but she couldn't help it any more than he couldn't help returning here. Stella peered out from the darkened doorway. He stood there not fifty yards away on the pavement looking up at the abandoned building opposite, oblivious to her presence, oblivious to the snow and cold. The windows were boarded up and the doorway had been temporarily bricked in. The demolition sign announced that it would be destroyed in a little under three weeks. Stella shivered again not from the cold but because she couldn't help but wonder whether he would be destroyed too.
He didn't move. He just stood there staring as though she were calling out to him. Stella wanted to run up to him, hit him, shake him, anything to stop him from pursuing this course to madness. Because that is what it was, madness. Somehow this woman, this image engraved onto a piece of paper had invaded his mind, his body, his soul and although she had been dead for over forty years she was alive to him inside his head.
Stella watched as he finally turned away and headed in the opposite direction. She waited for a few seconds and then slipped down the side-street and ran to wait at the corner. She watched him cross the road, treading carefully to avoid the larger puddles and walk away from her. She could see the water droplets shimmering on his black coat as he passed under the street-lamps. She waited till he turned the corner and was lost from sight. She knew he was heading home. It wasn't the first time they had done this. She walked back the way she had come and paused to look up at the abandoned brown brick building, it's boarded up windows announcing it's doom for all the world to see. Stella felt the anger and the despair bubble up inside her.
"Damn you Anna Gray! Why can't you leave him alone? What do I have to do to get you to leave him be?"
The street was deathly silent despite the hum of the distant traffic. There was no one to hear her heart-felt pleas. Stella didn't get an answer. She didn't expect one no matter how desperately she hoped for it. She turned away and headed back to her car. She got in and sat for a moment. She was so tired. She had to do something. She just didn't know what.
.
.
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