Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY. Wish I did though.

Notes Second chapter, hope you enjoy it, got quite long. Thank you very much for the reviews for the previous chapter, please continue - still love to know what you think - all very welcome, and always replied to :D Thank you also to everyone who has put this on alert.

Lost Letters: Chapter 2

Central Park:

Sounds moved slowly in the boiled air; voices across the park chimed in muted tones, too hot to shout, and the sound of traffic was a muffled boom. Discomfort was everywhere. The boating lake, cool and tranquil and a haven for all who wended their way there, remained placid however. Even the increased number of boats sent only the smallest ripples across a surface turned to syrup under the blazing sun. Rowing boats glided at a languorous pace, and contained many a lady of Shallott, trailing her hair and her heavy limbs over the sides for some relief, whilst her Lancelot strained red-faced at the oars, or gave up and flopped back in the bows himself. Watching the skies and the water pass. Eyes staying shaded against the sun's watery attempts to blind the unwary as it delighted in reflecting itself in constantly shifting white gold pools.

Too hot. Too still. Too hot to notice someone who would be still for ever now. The lake curled its way around the shape of a body sprawled amongst the shallows, concealed beneath willow fronds weeping over it. Water found its own level and accommodated the shape of the young man as it lapped the shore. It crept up, and licked away at a rectangle of green paper held in his stiffening fingers, creating ripples and waves of its own on the paper. Slowly, lazily, a spiral of green ink leached into the lake and was absorbed in moments, insignificant. Then a smaller pattern of dark ink marbled the surface momentarily before vanishing, whilst the black letters that had been sharp against the green envelope began to blur. The edges of the strongly drawn lines and curves swelled outwards, the water pulling the threads out of them until they began to disintegrate, and finally they disappeared into a sodden pulp.

Boats passed, and more gentle swells soothed the edges of the lake, washed over the cooling body, drawing it further down into the colder depths. Unresisting it slipped in, the remains of the letter clung around the locked fingers, and a brief swirl of red made the water wine around the head of the young man, and then it was washed away.

………………………………...

22nd August

We took a walk in the park yesterday, not something I do often enough. You know how it is though - you live somewhere, you take for granted what you've got on your doorstep. You'll laugh at this, but I've never even been up to the top of the Empire State Building, not in the years I've been here. I guess if you do come out here, we could do that together? I'm telling you though, you'll adore the park most of all. So, anyways, guess I'd better finish up here. Joe's calling for me in a bit, and I'm not even close to being ready…

………………………………...

It was the shadiest place on the street, Mrs Adams had long ago realised, and as she kept her modesty from the ardour of the sun, she sent up her usual thanks to the power above the cornflower-blue acres. Having finished her chores for the present, she had sighed down into the old canvas deckchair that kept her shape even when she had left it.

Her fearless of companion of more years than either of them could remember stalked over to his favourite place; the spot beneath the chair where the bulge of her seat just brushed the shock of fur on the top of his head. He was a magnificent cat, who was once ginger, but could now be only generously described as murky brown. His fur clothed him loosely, and his stomach had more than a wrinkle of fat. Revelling in the name of Joshua, he regarded the world magnanimously from one burnt-gold eye, and listened to its murmurings through one stumpy ear.

Life was good to him in his later years. He and Mrs Adams understood each other's wants and needs; he let her know what his were, and she provided them for him. In return he sat under her chair and chased away the occasional rat with a flick of his tail.

"Well now Joshua" Mrs Adams grunted, the chair creaking as she adjusted herself, "Seems like it's just you and me for the present. Though I expect your Rita-girl ain't gonna be long away. Maybe she's gonna be tripping back here with something sweet for your supper, to keep your stomach settled, what do you say to that, handsome boy?"

A paw swiped lazily at a beetle.

"Huh, well, we'll just wait and see then." The old woman, after rummaging in her voluminous apron retrieved a packet of tobacco strong enough to challenge even the most leather-lunged smoker and a grin deepened her wizened apple face. With the nimble fingers of much practice, she filled her pipe and wedged its rosewood stem between the gaps in her teeth. In a few moments a miasma of smoke rolled up and through the heat, and she settled back in her chair with a contented sigh.

Late morning drifted into early afternoon. The pipe had long been full of ash, when Mrs Adams's eyes blinked open blearily.

"Joshua? Where you hiding boy?" she croaked. There was no answering throaty miaow, and she felt around under her chair; nothing there either, "Where you got to, you old brown devil?" She muttered and heaved herself up from the chair and shuffled across the courtyard. At the bottom of the steps, she paused, sucking in a few deep breaths ready to tackle the ascent, having decided she knew where the cat might have got to.

In Rita's ground-floor apartment, propped open with a wad of old newspaper ever since the air-conditioning had broken a few days ago, a window provided an open invitation to a cat with few social graces. And to any passing burglars skinny enough to fit through the gap. Mrs Adams sighed and began to pull herself to the top of the stairs, panting heavily all the way.

"Get your sorry little ass outta that apartment, Joshua boy!" She gasped once she reached the top. No cat appeared, and no Rita either, so she continued, slippers flapping on her feet, scuffing across the cement and then over the threshold onto the wooden floor of the hallway.

Inside was stifling after the shady chill of her little courtyard and she leaned for a minute against the doorjamb to catch her breath. She blinked in the dimness. There was no one about and Rita's door was closed. Mrs Adams tapped it gently, and waited a moment or two for an answer. When none came, she called out, "Rita, honey? You got Joshua in there with you?"

Silence, and then the faintest sound of something scraping against wood followed by a clatter.

"Joshua Adams! I know what you're up to in there." Grabbing the door knocker, she rattled it loudly. Still no answer, so with a sigh of resignation, she fished out a ring of keys and clicked through them until she found the one she wanted. It turned in the lock with only a faint squeal before the old lady eased the door open and peered into the apartment.

"I know you're in here…"

………………………………...

Crime Scene:

At Stella's declaration, for a moment, everyone's expression matched hers in confusion. But possibilities and theories were already flashing through minds.

Danny found his voice first, "Names and addresses are all different? What the hell for?"

Stella herself answered him, deciding that as she had noticed the anomaly, she ought to present her theory on it, "Well, I don't know about you guys, but I can think of one possible reason…" She paused for a moment running another check on her logic.

"Don't hold back, Stell."

She narrowed her eyes at Danny, "Wasn't about to. What I think is this, this girl could be some kind of professional letter writer. She gets commissions, maybe, somehow, to write them for people. For whatever reason. Paid most likely; she writes them, then delivers them…" Trailing off, she started picking holes in her own argument, "… but I can see there might be problems with that theory." She shrugged ruefully at Mac, who smiled, and held out his hand for the letters. With a sigh, she surrendered them to him.

"It's a start." He admitted, "But you're right, I see a few problems with that theory. I'm sure there are people who might want letters writing professionally, it's a service I've seen advertised - people who aren't skilled in official letter writing employ someone to do it for them. But…" He examined the slanted writing on the envelopes, scrawled in places, and written with a pen that had seen better days, "These don't look professional. They look personal, handwritten all through, you can see the writing on the sheets through the envelope."

"Cheap envelopes too, huh? Colours suggest they're personal as well. Don't know about you, but I wouldn't be sending a bright pink envelope to my bank manager." Stella warmed to the theme, but still defended her original theory, "Could still be on a commissioned basis, an unusual one granted, but it's possible."

"It's possible." Mac agreed, and then passed over the letters to Danny, who had his hand out for them.

"I'm thinking it's about identity." He folded his arms over, keeping a grasp on the letters, "I mean, obviously, identity, but here's the thing, we're all standin' here trying to establish her identity, and failing. Now, maybe in these circumstances, knowing a name would not be a bad thing, but I can think of plenty other circumstances where knowing a name and an address would be. So, this is one way to keep 'em hidden; hide the real one amongst fake ones. For whatever reason."

"Money, identity fraud, social security dodges." Stella supplied some from his list.

"Yeah, and there's others. Maybe there's someone she don't want to know where she is, so she sends a false address. Or she has a different identity for different people she writes to."

"But if that was the case, how does she get the replies? They're addresses all over town, you can't tell me someone of her age can afford to be renting or owning apartments all over the city!" Stella was incredulous, her own arms folded.

Danny sighed, and wished the heat would get out of his brain, it seemed to be very slowly melting it away inside his skull, and he had lost the energy and the cerebral matter even to pick up the trail of his thought process. His shoulders slumped in defeat, "You got me beat there, I don't know. Hate to say it, but I don't know."

Mac looked at him, and stepped in. Late summer was his least favourite time of year; passions ran high, tempers higher, and judgements were lower, "We can pick up our theories once we got the scene cleared. Let's get everything we can from here; the more we find, the more we got to test our theories on. Stella, you and Danny finish with the body, I'll continue on the periphery."

"And I'll have another go with the two witnesses." Angell nodded at them all and walked over to join the clutch of uniformed officers.

The heat as they worked was unforgiving, intractable, and even Stella wiped her hand across her forehead several times, and blew her hair out of her eyes as she and Danny processed the body and all its traces.

She groomed the parched and dusty concrete for every last speck of evidence, that she knew she would not miss, whilst Danny snapped photographs. As he did so, it felt as if every flash was a stroke of lightning inside his head. His eyes were beginning to feel scalded in their sockets, and his head was one pounding, painful throb.

"You okay, Danny?" Stella looked in concern at him as the last of the evidence they had collected was sealed away. He seemed to be sinking lower and lower towards the ground, even his hair was wilting, and his face was flushed red.

He squinted back at her, "Yeah, yeah, I'm good thanks. Sorry, Stell, just, ya know, the heat and everything. August don't agree with me."

She stood and smiled, and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder, "Just as well then we haven't got too many more days of August left, huh? Anyway, we're almost done. I'll call the coroner over and we can get back into some air-conditioning."

"Sounds good to me." He smiled weakly back at her. She opened her mouth to comment on his appearance, and then decided to wait until they were finished. They stood in silence, the heat sapping away their vitality as the body was taken away in its black coverings. Danny shifted on his heels, and looked down at his shadow as it moved with him across the concrete.

With a frown, Stella regarded the perspiration sliding down his temples, and the pain that was clearly visible even behind his glasses, "Danny, you look like hell." She announced, "Go get yourself a bottle of water before you dehydrate."

He started to protest, but she was insistent, and held out her hand, "Here, give me your kit, I'll shout Mac and put them in the car whilst you hot-foot it over to the store."

She grinned, and he handed the silver box over reluctantly, the banging in his head at such an intensity that he had no resistance left against anything.

"Funny. But thanks, okay, if you insist..."

"I do."

"Okay, fine, I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere." He took his glasses off to massage the bridge of his nose, before turning and loping away.

"Mac? You good to go?" She called over to her partner.

He looked up at her voice and smiled, "I'm done, and not before time. Any longer and you might have had to be scraping me up off the ground as I was reduced to a human puddle."

She smirked, "Serves you right for wearing all that black clothing, Mac. You're gonna have to start buying some different colour shirts."

"I hate buying shirts." He replied, and Stella's retort was on the tip of her tongue just as Angell waved and called him over, but the opportunity for some gentle teasing would wait. She patted his arm, "See you back at the car." He nodded, and she strolled over to where they had parked.

Slamming the trunk down, Stella made her way to the driver's door, pausing as she felt her cell phone vibrate. She opened it as she got in, and read the information on the screen, before glancing into the mirror to see where Danny was up to. It seemed to be taking him longer than it should.

It had taken him longer than he would have liked. Grumbling against old ladies and giggling teenagers holding him up, Danny half-jogged out of the store, gulping water as he went along, savouring its cold touch. He crossed the street and approached the car, seeing Mac out of the corner of his eye also with the same destination. He hailed him.

"Hey, Mac! You…" A yell cut him short. Stella. He and Mac took only a second to glance at each other before they started to race towards the car, suddenly an insurmountable distance away. He ran, losing the bottle of water which burst on the ground, spraying droplets that hissed and fizzed into the sidewalk.

"Stella!"

Two men were at the side of the SUV. He and Mac both pulled their guns and bellowed out, "NYPD! Stop where you are!"

Neither stopped, and they were still too far. A shot went wide. Danny heard again a furious cry from Stella, and then another shot. Not from his weapon, not from Mac's. Stella's voice stopped abruptly, and he felt his stomach drop away as he fired again, and again in blind anger and fear.

"Stella!" It was both his and Mac's horrified shout.

He heard metal ping, and knew he'd missed his target. And knew Mac had. More bullets ploughed into the concrete. Doors slammed, the car was moving, no sign of Stella,

"No! Stella, no!"

The anguish in Mac's voice lodged in Danny's mind. He had to stop the car. Had to stop it. They had Stella. It was careering towards him, he couldn't see the driver, only a face, blurred. He couldn't see anyone else. Gun held out in front of him he fired again, and heard the shriek of tyres exploding through his head. Someone yelled his name. He thought, he couldn't be sure. There was only now the car bearing down on him. A shot fired from somewhere, Mac. Mac's voice. His name. The car. A face, almost visible. Coming closer. Not stopping. In a quick-silver second it happened. Black, cold, metal weight slammed into him. For a moment he felt it everywhere, and then he was falling backwards, taking so long to fall, surrounded by sharp folds of heat and agony. Then he landed. Hard. The last thing he felt was his skull smacking onto concrete. Dazzling, blinding pain. And then blackness.

Sorry; for cliff-hanger, damaging Danny and possible damage to Stella… Thoughts? Please review and let me know, feedback much appreciated! Lily x