A/N: A couple of days later than I anticipated, but here's the second chapter. Thank you so much for all the reviews to the first part, and to the people who've added this to alerts or favourites - I'm hoping you'll continue to enjoy it.
Thanks to lily moonlight for the readthrough, and suggestions.
Flack was the first to arrive. He ducked under the yellow tape cordoning off the platform, and hurried down the steps, away from the sullen crowd of people who were obviously the ones who hadn't thought to get away fast enough to avoid having to give statements. A couple uniformed officers seemed to be handling them, both of whom he could have recognised had he taken the time to do so, but he didn't.
Stella was sitting on one of the scuffed benches, leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees, staring fixedly at a spot on the floor.
Slowing his pace and walking over, Flack sat down next to her. "Hi, Stell."
"Hi." She looked up.
He didn't bother asking if she was ok, or how she felt, knowing already what her response to those sort of questions would be. And knowing that, being Stella, she would want to focus on the professional for now. "You've got a real knack for finding trouble, you know."
"Good to see you too," she shot back, the ghost of a reluctant smile hovering for a second around her lips.
"How about you tell me what happened?" he asked. He'd heard the vague outline over the radio from the two responding officers, but wanted to know what she had to say.
Stella sat up properly, using both hands to push her hair away from her face, and took a deep breath. She had been running over events in her mind, already sorting them out into a coherent statement. "I'm not even sure, completely. The – the woman on the track. I think she was running from someone. She kept looking behind her, she looked really frightened. She was heading right to the edge of the platform, I went to meet her, thought that maybe I could help."
"Did you speak to her?" Flack asked. He was jotting down details in his notebook.
Stella nodded, her forehead creasing. "I told her I was a police officer, showed her my badge. She seemed – relieved, asked me to help her. I told her I would, and she started to say something, and then, well – " she shrugged helplessly.
"Ok, I need to know exactly what happened after that," he said, and she closed her eyes, trying to replay what exactly had happened, at a speed slow enough to separate out each moment, as she related the surge of movement in the crowd, and how it had knocked the woman off the edge.
She paused as Mac appeared down the steps, nearly running in his urgency, case in hand. "Stella? Are you alright?" he asked as soon as he was within speaking distance.
She rolled her eyes at the concern in his voice. "I'm fine, Mac."
Mac met Flack's eyes over the top of her head, and Flack shrugged. "Mac, I'll fill you in properly in a minute. Stella, go on. You were saying it was only at that one place that the crowd pushed forwards?"
She nodded, as Mac took a seat next to her, and squeezed her hand briefly. "Yeah. It was really sudden. I think everyone leaned forwards and had to take a step to steady themselves. As if – " she opened her eyes, and they were clear, with a sudden comprehension. "Like at a gig, when someone shoves against someone for the hell of it, and it's like a mass of dominos, everyone falls forward a bit. You know what I mean?"
"I do," Flack said. "Not so sure about Mac though, can't really see him going to watch bands."
"I saw the philharmonic orchestra at…" Mac began, and stopped as he saw the looks the other two were giving him. "You mean a different type of band."
Flack rolled his eyes. "Like I said. I don't reckon much crowd-control's needed at your classical or jazz places. "
"Don't pick on him," Stella instructed, holding back a smile at the look of confusion on Mac's face. "But I think that must be what happened."
"So this could have been a deliberate act, is that what you're saying?" Mac asked.
She nodded. "Well, it could still have been an accident, if someone tripped and knocked everyone forward a step. But she was definitely running from something, or someone, she was terrified."
Flack prompted her with a nod to finish her statement.
"So, anyway, the crowd surged forwards. She was right on the edge, and just overbalanced. I tried to catch her – I got hold of her purse instead. I put it there to mark the spot it happened, when everyone had moved away. It's over there." She pointed to where she'd placed it carefully, on the concrete, partly overlapping the yellow safety line. "She fell right in front of the train. Didn't have a chance. Someone pulled me back, or I'd probably have gone over the edge too. I don't know who it was. When I got up, everyone was trying to get as far away as possible."
Her hand moved up to brush against her cheek, where the division between safety and death for her was imprinted in the light purplish bruise that was already forming, a straight shadowed line.
"Someone called 911," Flack interjected. "Said there'd been an accident. They'd heard Stella identify herself as a police officer and told the operator so, which is why something was lost in communication and the code for 'officer involved incident' went out."
"Yes, that's the code I got paged with," Mac said.
"Which, I'm guessing, is the reason you came down here in such a rush to save the damsel in distress?" Stella asked. Colour had returned to her face, the shock of the incident quickly wearing off.
"Something like that," Mac admitted sheepishly. He looked at Flack. "Witness statements?"
"Only just got here, Mac. I'll go and see what's happening." He strode purposefully away, as both Stella and Mac stood up.
"There's probably ID in the purse," she said, as he led the way over to crouch down next to it. "I don't have any gloves with me, so I didn't open it."
Mac opened his case, removing a pair of gloves. Pulling them on, he undid the clasp, sliding out a wallet and opening it, to reveal a driving licence. "Grace Ellison," he read. "Thirty-two years old." He stood up, walked the short distance to the edge of the platform, looked down.
She joined him, swallowing. Grace must have hit the front of the moving train and been thrown clear to the other side of the tracks. Her body was pummelled, limbs askew, a pool of blood staining the gravel around her head, which was tipped back at an unnatural angle, her face staring up at them unblinkingly. Stella turned away, but was left with the lingering sensation that Grace was looking into her eyes, silently asking, Why didn't you save me?
"I'll take the body and this scene," Mac said, cutting into her thoughts. "Call Danny and go to the address on the driver's licence, there might be some clues to who or what she was running from." He met Stella's eyes. "Before you say anything, I know perfectly well that you could handle this, but I don't want you to."
"Are you trying to protect me?" she asked, and he picked out the faint note in her voice that spelled danger if he said the wrong thing.
He hesitated, and went for the truth. "I can quite honestly say that I wouldn't dare to try!"
She flashed him a quick smile. "Stop trying to make me feel better about this."
"Is it working?"
She considered. "Yes."
- - - - -
The apartment building was well-kept, the sort of place, Stella considered, that would be at the upper end of her price range. It seemed to be trying to give the impression that it was more classy than it was with the abstractly patterned wallpaper, and wilting potted palms in the entrance-hall.
"This it?" Danny called back over his shoulder, down the hallway to where Stella was approaching more sedately with the building supervisor.
"What number?" she called back.
"Sixteen."
"Yep, that's the one." She caught up with him and they stood out of the way while the supervisor, a greasy-skinned, balding man in a leather jacket which probably had suited him better a decade or three ago, unlocked the door.
"So how exactly did she die?" he asked for maybe the fourth time, the interest on his face almost ghoulish. She could feel his eyes now on the new bruise across her cheek as he reluctantly handed over the key, his clammy fingers brushing against her hand.
"Ongoing investigation, sir, we're not at liberty to discuss it," Stella snapped, her patience wearing thin after enduring a round of routine questioning and a ride with him in the elevator. "If we have any more questions we'll be in touch." She closed the apartment door firmly, cutting him off before he could say anything else, and looked around. She was busy disassociating herself again from the case. Later she could think about Grace, and whether she could have acted differently, but for now she bundled up all those distracting thoughts and buried them, somewhere deep inside her mind.
"You know what he reminded me of?" Danny was asking, answering himself without waiting for a reply. "Like a cockroach, in that shiny leather coat. Couldn't remember specifically ever speakin' to her, but wantin' to know all the details of how she died. I hate guys like him, give me the creeps."
Stella was only half listening, already busy pulling on a pair of gloves. "Notice anything – odd – about this place?" she asked.
"Not really," Danny said. "It's pretty neat."
"More than that, it's immaculate, look at it." There was nothing out of place on the floor, no thin layer of dust on tables and the tops of bookcases, not even any tidily placed odds and ends. The walls were white and the carpet was pale pink; both colours to hold any dirt, except there wasn't any.
"She was a cleanness freak, all right," Danny commented.
Stella frowned slightly in disagreement. "This place doesn't even look lived in, but if no one did live here then there should be some dust at least, cobwebs, that kind of thing." She found the kitchen area and began inspecting the surfaces for any evidence that they had ever been used for cooking.
"Stell, come take a look at this."
She found Danny busy opening the drawers of the writing desk in the main room. "What have you found?"
"Nothin'."
"Well, why did you – "
"No, I mean literally nothin'."
Stella crossed the room in a few steps and stared down into the empty drawers, then turned to open a nearby cupboard. Its shelves were devoid of any content whatsoever, even dust. She met Danny's eyes, the same incredulousness in both of them. Without a word they began to open everything that would open – bedside cabinet, drawer beneath the dining table, refrigerator. Crockery and glasses were in a cupboard fixed on a wall in the kitchen, cutlery was in the cutlery drawer, newly polished pots and pans in another cupboard beside the sink, but everywhere else they looked they found exactly the same thing. Nothing at all.
"Who do you think did all this?" Danny asked, finally. "Grace Ellison, or someone else?"
Stella shrugged. "I've no idea. But there's nothing personal here at all. No letters, photographs, documents, jewellery – not even a shopping list. We're going to have to process this whole place from top to bottom, see if whoever cleaned out missed anything."
Danny sighed. "Figured you were gonna say that."
"It's not as if you have anything better to do, is it?"
- - - - -
When her phone rang, she was surprised to notice that over an hour had gone by. She had just flipped over the mattress on the bed, checking for any slits, possibly sewn up, inside which anything could be hidden. "Bonasera."
"It's Mac. Where are you?"
"Still at Grace Ellison's apartment. Someone's already gone over this place with a fine-tooth comb, Mac. It's empty."
She could almost hear his full attention snap onto her. "How'd you mean?"
"Danny and I have turned this place from top to bottom. Shaken through all the books, moved the furniture, looked under all the carpets. There's no papers, no food, no clothes – nothing."
"Fingerprints?" His tone let her know that he already knew the answer.
"All surfaces wiped down."
Danny called out to her from another room. "Stell, you have to see this."
"I've got to go. Meet you back at the lab."
"Take care." She nodded although he couldn't see her.
"I'm in the kitchen," Danny called as she hung up and opened the door of the bedroom.
"What've you found?" she asked.
In reply, he handed her a black light, and a pair of the orange Perspex shades. "Take a look."
"At what?"
"Take your pick."
She clicked the black light on. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
He grinned at her surprise. "Told ya that you had to see this."
The entire floor glowed under the black light. It showed the unmistakable signs of being scrubbed with bleach, every inch of it. As did all of the surface tops, and even the oven. She turned the black light off again and tapped it thoughtfully against her knee. "Right. We need to find out who emptied this place. We'll have to do a canvass of this floor, someone might have noticed something, and we can send the security tapes from downstairs to Adam."
"Surely the super would have noticed someone removing an apartment's worth of stuff?" Danny asked. "I mean, we asked him if he'd noticed anything out of the ordinary."
Stella shrugged. "Maybe he just forgot. Or couldn't be bothered to tell us."
"Or maybe…" he trailed off.
"What?" Stella prompted him.
He shrugged. "What if most of the stuff wasn't actually taken out of the building? I mean, if you wanted to get rid of a load of stuff like this, what would be the easiest way to do it?"
"Burn it?" Stella suggested.
"Exactly. Obviously not in here because the smoke detectors would've gone haywire, and even Cinderella or whoever wouldn't be able to clean up well enough to disguise that much mess. I'm thinking rooftop?"
"Cinderella?"
"Like I said, her or whoever. You comin'?"
Stella picked her camera off the floor and swung the strap over her shoulder, locking the door behind her and following Danny, who had charged on ahead with his usual boundless energy, and enthusiasm to be moving. She reached the elevator, which he was already standing inside of, jabbing the button to hold the door open for her.
"Nice bruise you're gettin' there," he commented. "What exactly happened in the subway? You didn't say."
"I'll tell you later," she replied, shortly. Then thought about it. "Actually, just ask Flack."
He picked up on the impression that a change of subject would be good, but couldn't think of one immediately, and instead squinted at his reflection in the mirrors covering each wall. The elevator doors chimed as they opened. "We're here."
"Yeah, I noticed."
They crossed the floor and up the short flight of stairs, opened the door to the roof, walked around the back of the hut-like structure which housed the door. A large metal drum, probably originally used to contain oil, stood upright, rusted and weathered, clearly a longstanding architectural feature. Stella snapped a photograph before pushing off its makeshift lid, a square of equally weather-beaten chipboard weighted down with three battered bricks.
She took another photograph of the soot-blackened interior, the foot or more of thick, tightly compressed ash. She could make out scraps of severely singed paper, black half-molten scraps of what had once probably been synthetic fabric. "I'd hazard a guess that we've got most of our missing contents right here. Everything flammable, anyway."
"We're going to have to process all this crap?" Danny muttered, eying it disdainfully. "It's gonna take us 'til next century, at least."
"Afraid so. There might be something important in it that's still unburnt, we'll know when we get it back to the lab and sift through it." She laughed at the clear disgust on his face.
"Stella, do you – "
"Dan, stop whining. I'm going to phone – "
His voice was suddenly more serious. "No, Stell, listen. Can you hear that?"
"What?" She strained her ears, and after a second could hear a faint beeping. An electrical noise. "Where's it coming from?"
"Over that way, I think." She followed his lead, the sound becoming gradually louder as they moved across the rooftop, further away from the door. About ten metres away there was an untidily-stacked and partly collapsing pile of rotting wooden crates, sheets of cracked and filthy fibreglass, disintegrating cardboard boxes squashed flat, even something that looked as if it had used to be a dining table. Apparently this area of the roof was used as a skip by residents. The beeping was louder now, the source presumably hidden amidst the junk.
"See anything?" she asked.
Danny crouched down, an unobstructed line-of-sight between him and the metal drum. "Found it."
"Where? What is it?" He indicated the spot to her, and her eyes widened in comprehension. She snapped a quick photograph, and he pulled the silver object out from the shadow of a wooden slat, and turned it over. A couple of disturbed woodlice scurried away into darkness.
The icon on the camcorder's screen warned that it was nearly out of memory space, but the red light in the corner of the screen was still flashing. Still recording.
Recording them.