Jay checked his phone for the millionth time. This is stupid. He just called me this morning. I have to stop it. His behavior had caught him by surprise. He remembered the countless times he'd nagged his mother about keeping her cool and thinking positive when he'd been overseas. Now that he was finally seeing the other side of the coin, he recognized his utter lack of regard for her in the past. It filled him with guilt on top of all his worrying.
"Jay." Erin said finally, after observing similar behavior the whole day. "Why don't you let me hold your phone?"
"What? Why?" he asked, reluctant to give it up.
"Because, you're not focused. I know this trip isn't exactly dangerous, but your head should be in the game. Let me keep it for a while – if he calls I'll make sure you pick up. Just trust me – that way you won't feel like you have to check it every second."
Jay sighed, knowing she was right, and handed it over. Erin slipped it into her left pocket and put her hands back on the steering wheel.
Not more than two seconds later, it rang. Jay's head snapped back to her, hand outstretched, but when she saw the caller id, she pressed it to her own ear.
"Hey, Maggie, this is Lindsay. Yeah, he left it with me. Yeah? Great. Thanks, Maggie."
"Coroner's report?" Jay asked with a disappointed sigh.
"Yep. She sent it to your email. I'll pull over."
Lindsay waited for the traffic light to signal green, then slipped into the nearest empty parking spot while Halstead reached into the backseat for his laptop.
Once they'd pulled up the file, things got a little more interesting.
Jay raised his eyebrows as his eyes skimmed across the screen. "Clear signs of rape. Ligature marks. Inconsistent with time of death. Looks like she died from asphyxiation alright, but… the rope marks on her neck were made after she died. There are scratches on her neck - could be from the victim herself trying to get free or the abuser. Coroner can't prove it, but she thinks she was throttled before she was tied up to the ceiling"
Erin pulled her slightly away from the screen, recoiling from the brutal images. "So the suicide was a cover-up."
"Well, you can't choke yourself to death with just your hands… so looks like it. Then he tied her up to make it look like a suicide."
Erin grimaced, hoping that the world wasn't so messed up that a teenage romance could go so wrong. But then she thought of her own past and felt that she was in no position to judge.
She turned the ignition back on and began driving again, heading towards their favorite diner. When they got there, they managed to find the same spot they'd used last week for their diner with Bunny.
Jay ordered for her while she went to the restroom. When she got back, she saw a coffee on her side of the table, and a water on his.
"Trying to cut back on caffeine, again Jay?" Erin laughed, eyes squinting happily as she remembered his previous failed attempts.
Jay laughed lightly and replied, "Nah… just feeling a little jittery, thought I'd stick with water."
Erin nodded and looked down at her mug before meeting his eyes again. "Jay… I know this is difficult for you. But if you need someone to talk to… that's whole point of this relationship."
Jay smiled at and reached out for her hand. He grasped it in the middle of the table and gave it tight squeeze.
"I love you," he told her, a slight trace of his goofy smile returning to his otherwise tired face. "And… I know. Having you there, Er, every night, it does more than you know."
He wasn't exaggerating. He felt anxious, but the feeling of her hand in his own and having the freedom to stare into the depths of her loving hazel-green eyes made his whirling thoughts slow down, if only for a moment - a precious moment. It grounded him.
He wanted to kiss her, to lean far across the table and touch those lips and the husky laugh that hid waiting behind them, to hold her jaw in his palm and take them away from all of this madness – but the waitress came just then to order their meals.
Erin ordered a full meal. Jay felt like the water hadn't done much to calm his nerves and he didn't feel up to puking out his dinner later tonight, so he stuck with some fries and left it at that.
Erin gave him a worried glance and then said, "I have some meds in my locker. When we get back, remind me to get you an ibuprofen."
Jay nodded.
Voight stepped out from his office and into the bullpen. "What do we got?"
Atwater started, "Burgess and I talked to the family. There's no way in hell they're accepting that she committed suicide. They say the notes don't sound like her, and they're all callin' her a happy duckling."
"Coroner's report also suggests homicide," Alvin added.
"Her teacher's been talking about an ex who broke up with her. Could have motive." Erin suggested.
"Then there's her writing assignments," Jay followed. "Reads more like erotica than the average school assignment – lots of non-consensual acts going on with a male character that matches the ex's description."
Adam spoke up, "Sarge, I got the victim's computer over here. I'm going through her files, and there's lot more where that came from."
"Read all of them. You can split the workload with Burgess. Note everything that can lead us to finding the abuser." Voight replied, drawing awkward glances toward the pair. Voight either didn't notice or didn't care. "Atwater, I want you handling the technical aspects. Find her online activity, and check the pods around her house on the nights leading up the frame up. Halstead and Lindsay, you're following the teacher's story?"
"He'll be here in a half hour."
"Ok. Al and I will pick up the kid for questioning."
"Are these kind of assignments a normal occurrence in your classroom?" Erin poked at Hoffman, expecting an indignant reaction.
"No, not at all. But Julie was different, like I told you… and I never discouraged my students from following more mature themes in their writing," he replied, rather proudly. "I'm not exactly the conservative type, despite my appearance."
Erin ignored the last comment. "You never… found Julie's writing strange in the slightest? It's not exactly the kind of material a normal teenager is comfortable sharing with her teacher."
"As I said, Julie and I had a special relationship. She talked to me often, about all kinds of high school drama. We had long conversations about relationships, the right time to have sex, knowing when to trust someone, and when to let go." Hoffman paused, like he was reluctant to continue. "Her parents… they're good people, but… they're busy. I think Julie looked up to me like a parent."
Erin glanced at Jay. He was leaning back in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked worn down. Shoot. The ibuprofen. I forgot.
"So… if something was troubling her… she'd tell you, wouldn't she?" Erin prompted, turning back to Hoffman.
"Well I thought so, but now…" Hoffman began. Suddenly a look of horror took hold of his face. "-unless… you don't think? Was she trying to tell me something through her writing?" He asked, suddenly rifling through his laptop bag, pulling out more assignments.
"Mr. Hoffman?" Erin prompted, encouraging him to share his thoughts.
"It's just… I sometimes thought that maybe she was writing about Josh – the uh, ex that I mentioned. You don't think he would have done something like this?" he asked with wide eyes.
"Did Julie ever mention that Josh was abusive?" Jay asked, suddenly leaning forward in his seat.
"Well… no, not explicitly," Hoffman replied, a sorry expression tainting his face. "But… there were times, times when I thought he might have… might have been…" He suddenly took his face in his hands and whimpered through his fingers, "Oh god… she was trying to tell me all this time… I should have known… I – I'm so sorry… Oh Julie!"
Erin glanced at Jay, a strange sense of guilt erupting through her system.
A faint white glow filtered through the sheer curtains of their bedroom. Erin shifted under the cold sheets and thrust a hand blindly into the darkness. Where her fingers should have met warm skin, she touched empty air. Groaning, she got off of the bed and made her way to the living room, toward the flickering glow of the TV.
"Jay?" she murmured into the silence.
"Hmm?" came his voice form the couch.
"You okay, babe?"
"Yes," he replied as she came up to the couch and sat beside his sprawled out body. "Couldn't sleep."
She put her cold palm against his cheek and felt his skin. His stubble tickled her. She bent down to kiss him, but instead, she stopped just short of his lips and brushed them with her own using the slightest touch.
Their breath mingled in the chilly night air, each of them breathing in the scent of the other. Jay soaking in the faint scent of her shampoo on the strands of her hair that brushed his face, Erin breathing in the faded smell of his cologne. She let her hand travel back behind his head, pinching the soft locks of his hair between her fingers, while he moved his palms to her hip, skin making contact with skin where her shirt had ridden up.
Erin leaned forward, and kissed him softly, making a small sound of contentment like a sigh.
That broke the spell.
Jay's hands moved upwards with a gentle quickness, crossing her back and stroking her sides as his lips locked with her own. He leaned forward until she was underneath him, never breaking contact.
The kiss seemed to last forever, until they both broke free of each to take a desperate breath of air. Their eyes met for a second, looking moist in the glare of the light.
"Erin," Jay whispered through a tortured breath, whisking a strand of her hair behind her ear as he did.
Erin tilted her face upwards, claiming his lips as her own, pulling his chest down to hers.
"I lo-", he began.
"I know," she replied, wrapping her arms round his neck. "Just kiss me."
Well, here's another one! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review! They make me very happy :D. In fact, leave a review even if you didn't - let me know what you'd like changed in future installments. Thanks for reading! 3 Now I'm off to bed, phew!
Oh yeah: let me know if you like the "linstead to case" ratio. Trying to mimic the show by including a case to solve, just with a little more linstead, since I think there are lots of great fanfics out there for only linstead stories. but tell me what you think.