Spoilers for "Child's Play" and "All in the Family".
Disclaimer: All characters belong to CBS and their creators at CSI:NY.
A/N: Thank you so much to all those reading and reviewing this story – I do appreciate the comments and all the interest. Barring horrible weather complications, the story will be updated every day.
The lyrics at the beginning of each chapter are from a poem by Henry Lawson, an Australian poet. I learned the poem as a song performed by Priscilla Herdman on her first album, The Water Lily.
Chapter 2
A lonely young wife in her dreaming discerns
A lily-decked pool with a border of ferns
Henry Lawson
"Danny, I'm looking for Lindsay. Any ideas?"
Danny looked up, startled, into the stern eyes of his boss. Sometimes it was easy to think of Mac as a friend, but other times, like now, there was no doubt about his role.
"I haven't seen her, boss. But she wasn't looking good yesterday. She said she was going home to sleep round the clock." He glanced at his watch with a worried look. Lindsay should have come in for the noon shift, nearly an hour ago. He had phoned her at 9:00 and had felt a rush of guilty relief when her phone had gone instantly to voice mail.
"Hey, Linds. I guess you're still sleeping. Hope you're feeling better. Let me know if you want me to call you in sick, okay?"
Mac sighed impatiently. "Damn it. Danny, these games are getting a bit juvenile, don't you think?" He left him no room to answer before saying, "I don't have a problem with relationships on the team, but covering for each other has to have some legitimate purpose. If you two can't handle things more professionally, I'll be forced to change things around. I expect you to find her and tell her I want to see her, please."
Stunned into silence, Danny said nothing, just nodded his head as Mac stalked away. He flipped open his phone and hit speed dial as he walked through the hallways quickly. "Hey, Montana. You okay? Mac's on the warpath. Call me."
He ran into Stella in the locker-room when he went to grab his coat.
"Where are you going, Danny? I need you to process those fingerprints from the scene Hawkes caught this morning."
"Sorry, Stella. Mac's looking for Lindsay, and she's not answering her phone. I thought I'd go and make sure she's all right." He would have tried avoiding her searching stare, but there really was no point, so he looked her full in the face, trying to impress her with his honesty before running away.
Stella frowned. "She was sick yesterday, throwing up in the bathroom. She told me it was something she ate. Didn't you take her home last night?"
He had nearly made it to the door, but that comment spun him around, eyes wide. "No." He said it slowly. "She told me she was going home to sleep it off. She told me it might be 'flu."
Stella nodded, "Well, you had it earlier. It would make sense if she caught it from you."
Danny tensed. "Actually, Stel… I didn't have the 'flu."
"Oh?"
"I had … a problem… that had to be dealt with." He looked at his feet, nervously shifting his weight, arms folded across his chest protectively.
"Anything to do with Rikki Sandoval?" Her voice was suspiciously casual.
"Flack told you." His fists clenched tight.
"I heard from the desk sergeant." Stella said, then stopped and looked at him reproachfully. "Oh, Danny. Tell me you didn't drag Flack into this mess too?"
The undercurrent of disappointment he had steeled himself to hear was becoming a rip-tide.
"I didn't ask him to stick his nose in it," he snapped irritably.
"No. Of course not. You expected him to just be able to walk away from you." Stella sat down heavily. "Danny …"
He looked up then, and struck hard and fast, "It was my problem to deal with, Stella. No one else's. I was trying to stop it from becoming anyone else's problem."
She ran her hands through her hair. "Every time I think you've learned something about trust, about this team, you prove me wrong. When are you going to figure it out? Everything you do affects us all."
He opened his mouth to argue, to point out all the times his lack of trust had been justified, but the look of distress on her face stopped him cold.
"Go. Find Lindsay. Make sure she's okay. She's been sick for a week, not eating, throwing up. Maybe you can figure out what's wrong with her."
He couldn't think of anything to say, so he closed his mouth and moved. He hit the stairs running, keys to one of the team's cars in his hand. Even in mid-day traffic, driving to Manhattan would be faster than the subway.
Every red light, every traffic snarl, every horn honking set his teeth on edge. He should have been looking out for her, he berated himself. He should have told her what was going on with him, not just frozen her out. He should have opened his eyes, seen what he was doing to her, instead of just wrapping himself up in a blanket of grief and guilt.
She'd been sick, and he'd been so self-absorbed he hadn't noticed. Stella said she'd been throwing up – not eating. He'd have been willing to think it could have just been 'flu… happy to think it was just 'flu.
But he, of all people, knew better.
By the time he made it to her apartment building, he was breathing as if he had run every mile from the lab.
Cursing the fact that they had not yet exchanged keys, even after all the months they had been together, he knocked on the super's door and flashed his badge. "I need access to Ms Monroe's apartment."
"She in some kind of trouble? She's a cop, ain't she?" The super, a man in his late 60s, shuffled and talked and sorted through a pile of keys on a long chain attached to his belt loops, his worn slippers scraping across carpet. "She's a nice girl. I can't imagine what kind of trouble she would get into. Nice girl. And a cop too, ain't she? She wouldn't do nothing wrong. No sir, not her. Sweet little thing. Came out here from Big Sky country, she always says. 'I miss the sky, Mr. Dillinger,' she'll say. 'Too many buildings to see the stars.' Heh. I tell her, you come to the city to see the stars, you get yourself down to Broadway, little girl."
He was pulling himself up the stairs one at a time, taking a minute to breath at each landing. Danny was twitching beside him.
"Brings me back buffalo jerky when she goes home. Ain't that a thing now? Makes me think of my granddaughter. Smart as a whip that one…"
Danny bounced nervously on the balls of his feet, restraining himself with difficulty from ripping the keys out of the garrulous old man's hand and just opening her door himself.
"You should knock first. It can't be right, us just barging in. You should really knock first… Miss Monroe? Miss Monroe? It's Frank. Frank Dillinger. You all right in there?"
Danny pushed past the man, whose nose wrinkled at the smell which hit them from the door. "Get behind me."
Dillinger's mouth dropped open when he saw that Danny had his gun out.
Danny cleared the living room and kitchen swiftly, making his way to the bedroom where the smell was stronger. A smell he knew well. A smell, that once it became a part of you, could never be fully scrubbed from the memory.
But she wasn't there either. "Montana? Montana, you here?"
Please God. Please, dear God, let her be all right.
He pushed open the bathroom door and dropped to his knees as he fumbled for his phone and hit Dispatch. "I need a bus. Officer down." He snapped out Lindsay's address, as he reached out for the small body crumpled on the floor.
There was blood all over her legs, the toilet, the floor: blackened clots and streaks where she had fallen in it. Her blood-stiff clothes were stuck to her.
"Holy fuck. Holy shit, Lindsay. Honey, what did you do to yourself?"
The super peered around the door, and bolted for the kitchen, where he lost his comfortable illusions about nice girls along with his lunch.
"Go and show the EMTs where we are," Danny ordered, his voice icily calm, his shaking arms wrapped around Lindsay. He checked her pulse: it was weak and thready, but steady.
"Hold on, sweetheart. I'm here, Linds. Fucking hell. Oh God, darling, what did you do?"
When the EMTs showed up, they had to pry her out of his arms.
